Astrial Dreams
by BlueHeartedQueen
Summary: The story of a little girl, Lyra, whose parents went out into Gotham's street and never came back. Alone and sick, these are her musings as she slowly begins to die of starvation and sickness. What does she have left but her dreams? Will anybody save her?
1. Chapter 1

**Astrial Dreams**

**The story of a little girl, Lyra, whose family went out into Gotham's street and never came back. Alone and sick, these are her musings as she slowly dies of starvation and sickness.**  
**What does she have left but her dreams?**

Lyra opens her eyes blearily as the whole house shudders around her, her brown eyes blinking slowly to clear sleep from them. She sits up, her soft warm brown hair tangled in messy plaits around her shoulders and her fringe sticking up into tufts.

"Mum?" She says softly, her tone uncertain, doused with confusion and fear. She kicks her way free from her quilts, stumbling slightly as the house trembles around her. She becomes fearful as the house gorans and moves faster, grabbing her teddy bear and running down the stairs.

"Mum?"

She can hear her mother and father talking, panicking. They're talking about her older brother, Mattie, she realises, who moved into a different apartment when they first moved here.

Her mother's voice rises, trembling with panic and fear, and her father responds in the same manner.

Her father is the one who notices her.

"Lyra, sweetie." He says, trying to calm his voice. He's suceeded in lowering the volume, but not stilling the tremble.

"We need to go out, get your brother."

"We can't both go out, we can't leave Lyra alone!" Her mother shouts. She looks wild and her eyes are terrified and feral looking, and Lyra cringes at the sharp tone her mother has adopted. The house groans again. Screams echo outside, along with gunfire and explosions and Lyra swallows, clutching her teddy bear close to her chest.

"What's going on?" She asks softly, her nails digging into her bear's soft fur.

"We don't know," Her father responds, running a hand through his hair. "We don't know."

"I have to go get Matty and bring him home, David!" Her mother snaps, grabbing her coat and yanking it on.

Her father shakes his head. "You can't go out there, Julia! Christ, listen! It's safer inside."

"We have to be together!" Julia snaps, "All of us!"

She strides out the door, slamming it behind her.

Lyra looked at her father, eyes wide and filled with confusion and fear.

"Dad?" She questions.

Her father shakes his head, "Lyra, I need to go get your mother. She can't go out there alone. I'll bring her home, don't worry."

Lyra's grip on her bear tightens. "You promise?"

"Yes. I'll lock the doors. Stay inside the house, and stay in your bedroom, alright? I love you, sweetie."

"Love you too." Lyra says softly as she watches him stalk out the door, hears the key turn and door lock.

The house groans, and with nobody left to protect her, Lyra feels fear begin to creep into her. She trembles, whimpering softly.

She hears gunshots be fired off, the loud noises echoing in her head. A low buzzing noise hums in the back of her head like a open refridgerator.

Afraid, she runs up the stairs. Her breathing comes in short, quick gasps, and she slids under her bed, each tremble of the house making her small frame rock with it and the bed jerk above her. Tears slid down her cheeks and snot clogs up her nose, forcing her to breathe through her mouth.

Wails erupt from her mouth as panic sets in, and she can do nothing but cry and whimper and wail. Eventually,  
exhausted, she curls up, still crying, petrified with fear, and falls into a sleep filled with nightmare creatures.

**This is my first FFN story, so if you review please be kind about it. I know that this is a short first chapter. This chapter is likely to be around the length of some others, but I think that they might get longer during the muddle. **

**Just an FYI, I've only seen Batman Begins. I've no idea what happens in the Batman movie I'm using, save for a guideline. **

**Thanks for reading.**

**~BlueHeartedQueen.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello. Nice to see you again. I've decided to put a little song at the beginning of chapters, so if anyone has a song they think would be good for the previous chapter, let me know. It's by Annette Hanshaw, and called, "Daddy won't you please come home?"**

**(Songs will be shortened slightly when put up)**

_When night is creepin'  
And I should be sleepin' in bed  
If you were peepin'  
You'd find that I'm weepin' instead_

My lovin' daddy left his baby again  
Said he'd come back but he forgot to say when

Night after night, I'm cryin'  
Daddy, won't you please come home?  
Daddy won't you please come home?  
I'm so lonesome

No one can fill that vacant chair  
Home isn't home when you're not there  
No need to knock, the door is open for you  
Please, daddy. . . . .

* * *

When Lyra opens her eyes in the morning, she is still curled up under her bed, snot crusting her nose and cheeks flushed and tear stained. She crawls out from under the bed, relieved that the house has stopped trembling and rocking.

But the silence also unnerves her. It is un-naturally loud, humming through the house like an unwelcome guest. It feels like last night was a loud boorish nightmare that seems to have ended, but is merely lurking, waiting to resurface.

She grabs her teddy bear and holds it close, brown eyes wary looking and lips slightly pouted.

She wanders through into the hallway, walks into her parent's room and stares at the empty bed with an anxious expression.

* * *

_They said they'd be back. They promised. Where are they?_

* * *

She made her way down the stairs, bare feet padding softly over the wooden floors. She is hungry, but does not know what to do. Her mother usually cooks her meals for her. Lyra cannot even reach the taller cupboards without the aid of a chair, and even then it is a useless feat.

Her mother uses fresh, separate ingredients to made food, and does not bring home already made soup and noodles and the like.

She checks the door, finding that it is locked, and then goes to the living room. Carnage greets her; the window has been smashed into and there is glass everywhere, glittering in the sunlight. She stares, watching them in a transfixed manner. They look like delicate diamond shards.

"Mum?" She calls softly, her tone full of yearning and hope, "Dad?"

There is no answer. Being honest, she did not expect one. The house is too silent, and her parents are noisy people. She bits her lip.

She wonders if there is anything, anything at all, she can eat. Her stomach is beginning to growl. She patters into the kitchen, wincing when something stabs into her foot. She lifts it, surprised to find red liquid is suddenly dripping down her foot.

Blood, she realises quickly. She pulls the small blood-tarnished piece of glass from her foot and drops it, wandering onwards to the kitchen. She hopes her mum has remembered to buy some fresh fruit and set it out in the bowl, but at the same time, she recognises that her mum has been busy. Probably gone and forgotten.

Gone and forgotten. She swallows slightly. She clambers onto a chair and stares at the fruit bowl, which is, as suspected, empty. She pokes the bowl slightly with her finger, as though to get some kind of revenge on it, and then clambers back down from the chair.

The backdoor's glass in spider webbed and cracked, like someone tried to smash it in and failed, and the sunlight that filters through it is distorted. It's twisted and oddly angled, splayed out on the floor.

Lyra finds she likes the pattern it makes on the floor.

Her stomach gurgles, and she pats it with her spare hand absently. Her other hand tightens on her teddies arm, dragging him along as she goes to retrieve her boots. Blood marks where her foot was a moment ago and as she walks towards the living room, her eyes move back to see she has left little footmarks on the floor.

It doesn't matter. Mum will clean it up when she gets home. Once upstairs, she changes (With slight difficulty and much huffing and puffing) from her pyjamas into a knee length black pleated skirt, a cream coloured top and white tight. Pulling on her shoes, she also tugged on her coat, doing up the toggles.

She grabs her teddy again and goes down stairs. She goes into the living room first, pushing the glass carefully aside with her shoe clad toes, and goes to the T.V. Turning it on, Lyra sits before it, teddy on her lap, and watches as the news flicks onto life.

Her grip tightens as it shows terrifying images of the outside, filled with dead bodies and rubble and carnage. She doesn't understand what it means to be dead, so she does not care for those who lay still. She does understand what it means to be in pain. The blood outside, all over the sidewalks, pavements and roads, looks as though someone has taken a bucked and mop and has been washing the city in it.

She hopes her mum and dad and brother are not in pain. Her eyes squint slightly at the sight of a particularly gruesome corpse, and she leans forward, about to switch it off, when the T.V shows Lyra her parents. Lying on the sidewalk near her house, pale and unmoving with a bullet wounds on their chests and heads.

Lyra swallows. "Come home when you're better, mum, dad." She says softly, before turning the T.V off. "Just make it soon, 'kay?"

She doesn't know what to do with herself. She's hungry, but has nothing to eat. She wants to play, but there's no one for her to play with. She wanders around the house, teddy bear with her always, small and fragile and alone.

Every now and then she'll hear a noise outside and race downstairs to peer out of the broken window, her eyes darting around to seek them out. They never appear.

* * *

_Are they sick? When are they coming home?_

* * *

She doesn't know the answer, and fear is building inside of her like poisonous bile. Finally, she sits on the sofa, careful to brush all the glass from it, T.V. turned onto the cartoon channel and waits.

There's nothing else she can do, for now.

**Just a short little thing, but hopefully you liked it. It's hard writing this kind of thing, purely because there isn't much she can do right now. If you would like me to consider a song for the first chapter, either PM me, or review it, alright?**

**Thanks for reading.**

**~BlueHeartedQueen.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Ah, good morning, or evening or whatever it is where you are. I hope you like the chapter, and if you would please review I would be grateful. I still need song ideas for the first chapter and this chapter, so please submit some suitable songs to me. Thank you. **

She sits there until she's numb and the night is beginning to draw in. Snow is beginning to drift down from the frost-bitten sky, carelessly floating into the house through the cracked window. She's cold, her coat not thick enough to properly warm her. Her hat and gloves and scarf are all meticulously put on in the hopes of more warmth, but it doesn't seem to be working. She's shivering, lips tinted blue and cheeks pale with cold.

Wind whistles through the house, a distinguished noise that hurts her ears now that there is no other noise to focus on. In the distance, she can hear a distant screaming and two loud bangs, but that much doesn't startle her. She has long since grown used to those noises being the background noise.

She gets up, leaving her teddy on the sofa, her shoes delicately crunching the glass under foot. She wanders to the window, nudging the bigger pieces of glass aside. She stands on tip toe, the cut on her sole hurting her as the scabbing splits. The sky is a dark shade of purple and black, deep grey clouds drifting over the sky.

* * *

_Come home. I want you home. It's so cold. . ._

* * *

If the weather keeps up, she knows she will get a cold or become sick. Her mum has warned of getting colds ever since Winter began. Usually, the house is warmer, but today it is cold and empty. She knows where the heating switch is and that when you turn it on, eventually the house will warm, but she is hesitant; her mum might be upset if she turns it on. Lyra has heard her crying a lot recently about not having much money in.

She wonders if she should put the christmas tree up. It's in the closet, and she knows her mum will be happy to come home to a put up Christmas tree, decorated and all. Her mum likes Christmas.

The closet it unlocked, she knows. The tree is small, only a little bigger than she is.

* * *

_Why won't you come? Are you angry with me, punishing me? Did I do something bad? I'm sorry, 'kay? Whatever I did, I'm sorry. . . _

* * *

She has managed to fix it together and now winding the tree lights around it. The pieces of glass on the floor are becoming hazardous, cutting into her shoes and cutting her toes up, but she ignores it. If mum and dad comes home, it'll be worth it, she figures. She'd even be happy to see Mattie right now, who God knows has done his fair share of sibling torture over the years.

She plugs the lights in, watching as the start to shine brightly. All reds and greens and blues and yellows. . . she watches with wide eyes, lips slightly parted. She goes back to the cupboard, nearly crying about the feet that are now bleeding into her shoes and are hurting like hell. She grabs the white hamper she knows contains baubles and little tree ornaments and even the beautiful angel, robed in gold, and drags it through to the living room.

Maybe she should sweep the glass up. . . She shakes her head slightly, determined to finish the Christmas tree first. She opens the hamper and begins in earnest, taking out a red bauble decorated with silver dots of glitter.

Eventually, after thoroughly decorating the tree with terribly contrasting baubles and ornaments, Lyra steps back to look at it.

She knows the colours are contrasting terribly. To her, Christmas trees are supposed to look like that. A tidy Christmas tree with colour coordination is boring. This tree is anything but.

* * *

_Will you come home now? Are you still sick?_

* * *

Her stomach growls and she groans slightly. It's almost painful. She turns off the bright lights after she brutally shoves the angel on top of the tree and goes out of the living room, grabbing her bear on her way and goes up to her bedroom.

She struggles into her pajamas, gasping with the cold, and clambers under her covers.

* * *

_I'm being a good girl, mum, dad. I'm being good, 'kay?_

* * *

She closes her eyes, trying hard to fall into sleep. She curls up, her hands wrapped around her teddy. She stays awake along time, lost in her thoughts, listening hard for the return of her parents.

**I hope you liked that. Please review.**

**~BlueHeartedQueen.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey guys! I am back with the fourth chapter. That's . . . pretty much all you need to know, right? Great. Thank you for reviewing!**

**Breaking Benjamin- Dear Agony **

_**I have nothing left to give**_

_**I have found a perfect end**_

_**You were made to make it hurt**_

_**Disappear into the dirt**_

_**Carry me to heaven's arms**_

_**Light the way and let me go**_

_**Take the time to take my breath**_

_**I will end where I began  
And I will find the enemy within**_

_**'Cause I can feel it crawl beneath my skin**_  
_**Dear agony, just let go of me**_

_**Suffer slowly, is this the way it's got to be, dear agony?**_  
_**Suddenly the lights go out**_

_**Let forever drag me down**_

_**I will fight for one last breath**_

_**I will fight until the end**_  
_**And I will find the enemy within**_

_**'Cause I can feel it crawl beneath my skin**_  
_**Dear agony, just let go of me**_

She has woken early, and the sky is still dark and frostbitten outside of her window. She sits on top of her dresser, eyes dark and sad.

* * *

_They haven't come home yet._

* * *

She's hungry and cold and has never felt more alone in the world. It feels almost like she is trapped inside a prison of her own making (And promise) languishing there forevermore.

Lyra sighs softly, watching her breath gush out and brush against the window, making condensation form. She climbs down from her dresser, landing awkwardly on her cut open feet. She hisses in pain, tears stinging her eyes. She blinks for a few times, trying to stop herself.

It's like storming the Winter Solstice. Tears drip down her cheeks and she snivels and whines softly. She goes over to the landing, switching off the light she has kept on, for fear of what lays in the darkness. What she can't see.

She goes back in her room, dressing in several layers of clothing and her wellingtons (She reasons that the soles are so thick as she won't be so badly injured if she steps in glass) and grabs her bear.

* * *

_I won't leave you alone anymore. I promise. It's too lonely._

* * *

She traipses downstairs, her thick clothes keeping her better insulated. She yawns softly, tired from the sleepless night she spent lying there, light filtering into her bedroom and body curled up defensively.

Her stomach groans, and she rubs it, trying hard to ignore the building hunger pains. She comes down the stairs and looks out the living room to see several people running past, screaming in fear and crying out. One of them sees her and runs to the front door, slamming against it. His fist smacks into it, frighteningly strong. The resulting noise is a loud crack.

"Let me in, girl!" he shouts.

Lyra swallows. "I'm not supposed to let in strangers." She calls back softly. "I'm sorry."

Should she let him in? She isn't supposed to. In the end, the choice in taken from her. One of the men chasing after the runners pulls out a gun and shoots it (BANG, BANG, BANG) at the person. Blood sprays up at the wall and Lyra stares in shock.

The man's eyes roll back, and his body convulses, falling to the ground. He splutters through a mouthful of blood and then falls silent save for rasping breaths. The man who shot him looks at her, and shrugs, running after the runners.

She isn't important to him. She is not threat. Lyra knows the man is hurt. His breathing is fading and she doesn't like it. She bends down, retrieving one of the many spare keys her mum leaves lying around. She unlocks the door and opens it. Crouching before the man, she pokes him gently. He groans and blood bubbles from his mouth.

"Are you alright?" She asks softly. His eyes flit open, and he gurgles some more. His chest stops rising and falling, and he stills completely. He doesn't even blink. Lyra poked him again.

"Sir?" She whispers. She is becoming fearful. The man is obviously badly hurt. She takes one of his hands and squeezes it. "Is there someone I can get for you?"

No answer. No one?

"Are you alright?"

No answer. He's not alright.

* * *

_No one's alright anymore. . ._

* * *

Shaking her head softly, deducing there is nothing she can do, Lyra closes the door. She wonders if he'll still be there later.

The runners return shortly after, when she is sat on the window sill she has not long swept of glass, and she calls them, pointing to him. "He's hurt!" She cries. Nobody comes back for him- they deliver panicked looks and run on.

"Little girl!" One cries finally, "Little girl, get out of sight! They're coming!"

Lyra pays no heed, actually stepping out of her haven to call their attention to the hurt man.

"He's hurt!" She calls, pointing down at him.

"He's dead." The woman that had cried at her to get inside snaps. "Now get back home to your mother!"

"She hasn't come home." Lyra replies in a whisper, watching as the woman races forward, blonde curls bouncing on her shoulders. She steps back inside, giving the man a sad look as she closes the door, standing on tip-toe to lock it.

A few minutes later, sitting in the living room and slightly smudged with blood, Lyra hears voices.

"Look, if that little girl was there, clear as day, then maybe there are more. Maybe there are rebels there." A voice says. She looks out the window to see the man from earlier coming back.

"Look, man, for all we know, if there _were_ any rebels they've gone and cleared out by now." Another man responds, scowling.

"We should check anyway." The first man insists.

He knocks at the girl, calling out softly, "Hello? Little girl? You in there?"

Lyra remains silent, quietly creeping from the living room up to the stair. The door suddenly cracks as something smacks hard into it, creating a boot print into the door. Lyra lets out a startled cry, running up the stairs. The door crashes down to the ground in splinters and cracked wood chips and the two men immediately begin to hound up the stairs after her.

Lyra gasps in panicked breaths, slamming her bedroom door.

* * *

Hide! There's nowhere to hide!

* * *

The bed. In a cliché moment, she slips down to her belly and crawls under the bed until she's pressed tight against the wall, curled up and whimpering softly. The two men step into her room, and she watches with bated breath as their feet stalk alongside the bed, stopping and turning to face it.

"C'mon, little one, we won't hurt you." One man coaxes softly.

"C'mon, C'mon. . ." The other coes pathetically. They crouch slowly, and suddenly the matress flies off the bed,

"Well now," The first one, the one who had counteracted that there might not be rebels, says quietly. "Are you alone, little girl? We shouldn't let you be alone. Is there anyone we can call?"

Lyra shakes her head. "They were hurt. They haven't come back yet."

"Who?"

"My mum and dad." Her face scrunches up and tears form in her eyes. She sniffs quietly.

"Have you been here all along, by yourself?"

"Uh huh." She nods.

"I see." The man says. He stands and glares at the other one. "I told you there wouldn't be any rebels around here."

The other man shifts, scowling. "Not my fault." He snaps.

Lyra glances at each of them, nervous and feeling sick.

"Well now, little miss. What are we gonna do with you?" The intelligant man asks, turning back to her.

**Wow. Stuff happened. I guess there had to be more to the plot than just her dying, anyways. Not sure what'll happen next. Still need songs for chap 1 and 3 and now even 4. Let me know, and send me a line!**

**~BlueHeartedQueen. **


	5. Chapter 5

**I will admit that I am a little drunk right now. It was my brother's birthday party, so, yeah. . . I thought that you guys were due a chapter anyways, so I thought to myself ****I'd better give ya a new chapter. I'll sort the spelling and shit out tomorrow, because, to be frank, I couldn't really give a shit right now. Ha. Anyways. . .**

**Atreyu, Lip Gloss and Black-**

**Aren't you tired of being weak?  
Such rage that you could scream  
All the stars right out of the sky  
And destroy the prettiest starry night  
Every evening that I die  
I am exhumed just a little less human  
And lot more bitter and cold  
I am exhumed just a little less human  
And lot more bitter and cold  
I am exhumed just a little less human  
And lot more bitter and cold  
I am exhumed just a little less human  
[Incomprehensible]  
After all these images of pain  
Have cut right through you  
I will kiss every scar and weep  
You are not alone  
Then I'll show you that place  
In my chest where my heart  
Still tries to beat  
It still tries to beat  
Aren't you tired of being weak?  
Such rage that you could scream  
All the stars right out of the sky  
And destroy the prettiest starry night  
Every evening that I die  
Live, love, burn, die  
Live, love, burn, die  
Live, love, burn, die  
Live, love, burn, die**

**Lyra**

She waits with bated breath, her brown eyes wide and body trembling with fear.

* * *

_What will they do?_

* * *

It feels as though she is being judged by these two men standing in front of her, but that can't be right, can it? She thought only God was supposed to judge people, but does he even_ exist_? Her mother thinks so, but her father does not.

She swallows, watching as one mumbles something to the other and pulls out his phone, dialling him number **(Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring)** and watching as he begins talking his earnest, his voice quiet but quickly spoken despite this.

"Look, man, does he want her or not? You know that he wants the rebels quashed out. If he trains her at a young age, or even one of his generals trains at her, then she could be his." Tbe man on his phone says, voice slow and even.

She hears a mumbling through the phone, clearly responding to what the man had said.

"Yeah? Well, tell him he could really use her. She seems really trusting."

Lyra whimpers softly, shifting herself against the wall, and curling up against it.

"Great. That's great." The man closes his phone and slides it into his pocket, looking at the girl.

"What's goin' on, mate?" The less intelligant man replies, looking shifty.

"I had an idea. I though that Bane might be able to use her as a lackey. If she's taught from this age onwards, she's bound to be good at fighting and shit. She could be Bane's body guard when she grows old enough."

"Good idea." The other agrees happily.

Lyra looks between them, shaking softly.

"One of Bane's generals has agreed, little girl, that you could train beneath them." The man tells her, crouching before her.

"What's your name?" The other says suddenly.

She blinks, biting her lip. Finally, she relents and murmurs, "Lyra."

"Sounds a lot like liar." The other comments. The man scowls and gives him a sharp dig in the ribs, much to Lyra's amusement.

"Shut up!" The man spits. The other is silenced. The man holds out hand, "Come on." He says quietly. His tone isn't soft or even gental, but Lyra realises she has no choice, and takes his hand, allowing him to help her up.

She understands that she shouldn't trust him. Her mother and father always told her never to go out with strangers.

* * *

_Never get into a car with strangers, never talk to them, never take anything from them. . ._

* * *

She swallows, stepping away from the other as he attempts to grab her hand, instead taking the hand of the man.

She looks at him, eyes blinking innocently.

* * *

_Is this supposed to happen? Are they supposed to take me away? Maybe they're supposed to. Maybe mum and dad don't want me anymore. . . _

* * *

Eventually, the men begin to walk towards her hallway, to take her downstairs. She hesitates before the door, digging in her heels.

* * *

_I wasn't supposed to leave. I promised._

* * *

"What do promises mean to you?" She asks the man seriously.

The man blinks, stoic for a moment. "Nothing," He says simply.

She nods, this time allowing him to drag her along. The man snorts, running down the stairs behind them. He has been gathering some of her clothes.

"Come on," The man urges him impatiently.

"Well, she needs clothes," The other snaps back.

Lyra bit her lip, quietly glancing between the two men.

"Where are we going?" She asks quietly. The man glances down at her, grabbing her hand.

"Away," He answers, "You're going to meet a man who's going to train you. Enable you to fight and become strong."

"But fighting's bad," Lyra says, eyes troubled.

"No, kid. Fighting is the only way to protect what belongs to you." He stops, crouching before her. "Your parents are gone, Lyra. They left you. They don't want you anymore. You are Bane's now. If you want them to come back, you'll have to impress them. Learn to fight. Protect yourself and them."

"They. . . don't want me?" She doesn't begin to comprehend or understand what the words seem to mean, but they lodge into her ribs, cutting deep into her heart and making it squeeze tight. She's suddenly breathless, and her stomach hurts.

* * *

_Why don't they want me I thought they loved me why won't they come for me take me home I want to go home. . . it's too late. They told me they loved me. They must have lied._

* * *

The man takes her hand, stands and begins to lead her along. Her feet stumble along, her mind beginning to numb out completely.

Her lips part gently into a soft, 'O' of pain and she bites back on years.

_They must have lied._

**Aaaah. There y'all have it. Hope you liked. I think I know where this is headed now. Give me reviews, beautiful, beautiful reviews! Drunken physco babble and all. XD**


	6. Chapter 6

**Well. This story as actually. . . being payed attention to by people. Wow. So, of course, since I'm such a lovely English Rose of a person, I decided a new chapter was due. And it may well actually be a longer one! (Insert cheer here)**

**Course, I've no idea what will happen, but what hey! All things come to those who start off with a kick-ass song"**  
**Ladies and gents, I give you,"Field of Innocence," By Evanescence**

**I still remember the world  
From the eyes of a child  
Slowly those feelings  
Were clouded by what I know now**

**Where has my heart gone**  
**An uneven trade for the real world**  
**Oh I... I want to go back to**  
**Believing in everything and knowing nothing at all**

**I still remember the sun**  
**Always warm on my back**  
**Somehow it seems colder now**

**Where has my heart gone**  
**Trapped in the eyes of a stranger**  
**Oh I... I want to go back to**  
**Believing in everything**

**_[Latin hymn:]_**  
**Iesu, Rex admirabilis**  
**Et triumphator nobilis,**  
**Dulcedo ineffabilis,**  
**Totus desiderabilis.**

**Where has my heart gone**  
**An uneven trade for the real world**  
**Oh I... I want to go back to**  
**Believing in everything**  
**Oh, Where**

**Where has my heart gone**  
**Trapped in the eyes of a stranger**  
**Oh I... I want to go back to**  
**Believing in everything**

**I still remember.**

They take her to an apartment five stories high. The elevator reeks of disgusting scents and the stairs creak with protest when she lightly steps up them,  
the two men grumbling to each other as they follow. They sound heavier than she does, and she attributes this to their large size.

She holds onto the weak rail with one hand (Somehow it makes her feel even more vulnerable and unsafe despite it being there, because of the way it trembles and quakes under her light grip) and tugs at her left plait with the other, teasing the band that holds it together.

She is nervous, and she is very much aware of the height they are slowly increasing to. She stops, waiting for them to catch up, and takes in soft rapid breaths. She cannot deny that walking up all of those stairs has tired her somewhat.

She glances back, gazing at the stupid man and the intelligent man with something akin to passiveness. Her stomach growls softly, and a wave of nausea catches her. She sways,dizzy, and the intelligent man moves quickly, grabbing her and keeping her from toppling over.

"You need something to eat," The intelligent man states. Lyra does not distribute this, because she knows it is true.

* * *

_Weak. Didn't they want me because I was weak? Did they really hate me so much. . ._

* * *

She eventually licks her lips (Which are dry, but not completely ransacked of water. She has been able to drink from the bathroom tap and even brush her teeth.) and struggles to find footing on the stairs. She looks out the many grimy windows as the man pushes her up the stairs, grimly prospecting how her mum would have been ashamed if her own windows were caught like that.

"Where are we?" She asks softly, hand once again winding into her plait.

"Kid, does it matter?" The stupid man asks.

"Why wouldn't it matter?" Lyra retorts. "Would it matter if I decided not to tell you something you wanted to know?"

The intelligent man snorts, "She means to say that what might matter to her, such as the location, might not matter to us, but that if it were another situation and you asked her something that didn't matter to her, you'd feel the same way she does."

Lyra nods. The stupid man snorts and rolls his eyes.

"Anyway, kid, we're at my apartment." the intelligent man (Who Lyra was considering naming I.M) says, striding onto a floor and stopping them to go through the door opposite the staircase. He fishes out keys from his pocket and unlocks it, letting them in.

"The general, or mercenary, if you prefer, Creed, wants you to come by tomorrow. He's busy today."

The Stupid Man (M.I) sniggers, "Well, kid, looks like you're with us for a little longer."

Lyra blinks, tilting her head. Her lips pout slightly.

"Why would that be funny?" She wonders, aloud.

I.M rolls him eyes, "Pay him no attention. He hasn't the sense God gave a virus."

* * *

_He's cold. . . maybe I should be cold, too. The sun never seems to come out anymore. . ._

* * *

Lyra sits down on a sofa as he bids, and watches as the man goes through a room. The clattering noises make her think it's a kitchen. He returns minutes later with a plate in his hands.

On the plate, a sandwich rests. Lyra cannot help but stare at her, eyes wide and stomach groaning with hunger.

I.M hands her plate. She gives him an odd look, tentative and uncertain, as though she suspects him of playing a cruel prank, a jest if you will, on her.

"Eat," He orders. She picks up the sandwich, peeling the bread apart to see what it contains. Some kind of pale cheese, sparingly sliced and salad cream. No butter. She tears it into chunks, and eats them slowly, eyes dropping down with pleasure.

When he tries to take the plate, thinking she is finished because she is eating so slowly, her eyes snap open with shock and she gives a soft whimper. She sets the plate back, and watches as she eats.

* * *

_It tastes so good, I am so thankful, so, so thankful, it hurts when it reaches my stomach, but still so good, so, so good. . ._

* * *

Eventually she finishes, and hands him back the plate. Her hand rests on her stomach, which has become slightly bloated, and she says a soft, "Thank you."

"You're welcome, girl." I.M says.

"What's your name?" She asks softly.

The man pauses, and then nods as if to say, _"Oh yeah, completely forgot about that" _before he says, "Richard. You can call me Rick."

"Alright," She responds quietly. "Rick." She smiles, testing out the word. "Riiiiick. Riii-iiiii-ck." She laughs, eyes brightening. "I like it." She tells him.

He smiles tightly. "I like your name to, liar."

"Lyra!" She exclaims, correcting him almost immediately. The S.M snorts. She turns on him, brown plaits swinging over her shoulders. "And what's your name, stupid man?" She barks.

S.M splutters.

"His name is Cameron." Rick says.

Lyra nods. "I shall call him Sir Camelot."

Rick snorts, but does not say anything against it. Cameron is still spluttering.

"Lyra." Rick starts, looking her over. "You need a bath."

"Okay."

A half an hour later, the tub is filled half way with lukewarm water (All their feeble plumbing can produce) which is quickly turning cold. Lyra splashes around in it, trying to ignore how cold it is. She has washed her hair with some kind of Head n' Shoulder (Which, according to the label, has both Shampoo and Conditioner in it) and there is still some traces in her hair. She is not used to washing her hair without her mum's help, but didn't want to ask Rick for help.

She has scrubbed her body with a little bar of soap (Wincing painfully when she had to wash over the many cuts in her feet. She cried slightly.) and is now pretty much free to get out of the bath.

Rick knocks at the door. "Did you drown in there, kid?" He asks gruffly.

"No," She calls back. "I'm trying to get this stuff out my hair!"

She can practically hear the embarrassment reeking from his voice when he inquires if she needs help.

* * *

_Swallow my pride. I have to. My hair'll be as greasy as a sheep's wool if I don't._

* * *

"Yes," She sighs back, knowing that this will be an embarrassing ordeal for both of them. He comes in, head ducked low and blushing, and Lyra brings up her knees and hides her body under the bubbles, cheeks flushing.

He grabs the jug, fills it, and begins to rinse her hair off.

He looks away when it is done, standing and holding out a towel. She pulls the plug and stands, wincing and hissing in pain as she does so. She takes the towel and wraps it around herself, laughing when it manages to around several times.

She steps out, cringing again. Her socks at least had provided some softness for her to tread on, but the cold floor only served to aggravate the wounds on her soles.

"Show me your feet," Rick orders. She sits against the tub, dutifully holding out a foot.

Rick bends down and winces. "You've been walking around with those wounds all day?"

Lyra shrugs. He scowls, tossing a, "Stay there" over his shoulder before he stalks off. She waits.

* * *

_He will come back, won't he? He will?_

* * *

He returns with some kind of First Aid Kit, bringing plasters, bandages and tape out.

He observes her foot, declaring she needs stitches, and brings out thick black thread and a needle. Lyra doesn't want to think about what the heck, "You need stitches" means if it involves the needle and thread and her skin.

She winces and scowls when he brings out some cream and daubs it on her feet. It stings like hell. She whines softly when he plasters up the small wide cuts, and nearly outright shrieks when he threads the needle and starts stitching up a long wound on her sole.

She whimpers as he finally wraps a bandage around it, sticking it together with sticky tape. Her feet look as though she is wearing snow boots. She doesn't enjoy the notion as much as wearing her wellingtons.

When he plucks her off her feet, he brings her to the living room. She's shivering with cold, but she's warmer than she has been in days so she makes no complaint. He and Cameron turn away while she dresses in pajamas and then she towels her hair dry.

Finally, he brings through several thin quilts and arranges a bed on the sofa.

* * *

_Would you tell me a story if I asked for one? One about how my mum and dad will come home soon?_

* * *

She doesn't ask for the story she desires. She fears what will be thought of her, the little girl keening for her mum and dad's return, for the ultimate Happily Ever After, and so retains her silence.

She settles in the makeshift bed, eyes half closed. She realises she has forgotten her teddy and freezes, eyes wide.

"Hey, kid," Cameron says, opening her bag and digging under the clothes pile. "Thought you might miss this guy."

He brings out the bear and she gasps in delight, taking him and wrapping her arms around him happily.

"Thank you!" She gushes, snuggling with the bear happily. Cameron smirks brightly at Rick, as though he'd gotten one over him, and Lyra yawns.

She closes her eyes and curls up, wet hair hanging in soft toffee brown spirals.

When Cameron offers a story, she nods tiredly, hanging onto his every word as he tells her one. No, it is not her Happily Ever After, with her parents return to her. But it comes pretty close.

She drifts off when he has finished, even managing to hear Rick faintly bid her goodnight before she falls into slumber.

**Haha! How was that for ya! Nice chappy! I've written this to be uploaded by Christmas (It's 6;48 right now, so Christmas being tomorrow, you should read it be then) so while it isn't really Christmas related. . . *Shrugs* she gets her bear back. What more do you want?**

**Anyways. Review. You know you want to. **

**~BlueHeartedQueen. **


	7. Chapter 7

**Maybe it's because it's Christmas Eve. IDK. Whatever it was, it pretty much made me want to write you another chapter. This will have excellent Lyra-takes-the-mick time, so if you want more moments like that, review! So, this chapter, the song is, "Carry the Cross" By Arch Enemy.**

**We walk through the ages**

** The world on our shoulders **

**The burden we carry **

**To the dark end of our days**

** A thousand eyes watching**

** every step we are taking **

**waiting to see us struggle and fall**

**And when we are beaten **

**The cross holds us down**

** I hear them laughing **

**And walking away**

**Carry the Cross **

**And suffer the loss**

** Hear my confession**

** Forever damnation**

**Reincarnation**

** Bleeding forever **

**Recover the pain **

**Pain gives me strength**

** Pick up the cross **

**And carry it on**

** Over and over the wheel turns again**

**And when we are beaten **

**The cross holds us down I**

**hear them laughing **

**And walking Away**

**Carry the cross**

** And suffer the loss**

** Hear my confession**

** Forever damnation**

She wakes early, body aching from the rough sleep and nightmares she had endured throughout the night, to Rick shaking her and hissing at her to get up.

Sleepily, she rubs her eyes. Even without a mirror, she knows her hair is a knot free mess. The kind that you can't tame until it settles a little by itself because it isn't knotted, just gravity defiant.

"C'mon, kid," Rick hisses. "We need to get you to Creed. He wants to check you out."

Nodding, she sits up, fingers curling into her bear's fur. He hands her the bag of her clothes and goes into the kitchen. She dresses (As usual) with difficulty into a pair of black tights, a pleated skirt and a black jacket. She pulls on her cream coloured coat and then bends down to put her wellingtons on. They will,  
she realises, be difficult to remove later on, particularly with her feet bandaged the way they are.

Still, she forces her feet in them, hissing softly in pain. She stands up, whimpering slightly. She grabs her teddy.

"Done, Lyra?" Rick calls through the kitchen.

"Yeah," She calls, biting her lip to hold back her cry of pain. He makes his way back into the room, bearing a plate of cheese and toast.

Her eyes widen and she sniffs appreciatively.

"It's a good thing you like cheese and toast, because that's all I have." Rick informs her.

"It's fine," Lyra says, smiling. "I'm really grateful."

Rick nods. "When you go to Creed, you'll be staying with him. He's pretty much going to take you with him like a shadow, so you learn how everything plays out. Eventually, you may meet some of Gotham's stronger characters."

Lyra bites her lip, confused. He notices this and begins to elaborate.

"Like the Joker, Scarecrow and so on. After Creed finishes with you, you'll move to shadow someone more important, like the Riddler or Scarecrow. Eventually, you'll move up to Bane. By that point, you'll be a lot older and able to be a protector."

"Or a shield against bullets anyway," Cameron calls, coming out through the apartment's entrance.

Lyra sticks her tongue out at him, scowling. He sticks his tongue out back. She rolls her eyes.

"C'mon, kid! We don't have all day!" Rick snaps, ushering them out towards the door. Lyra just managed to grab the toast from the plate and stuff it into her mouth before he had dragged her from the door.

Chewing it and trying not to whimper at the burning temperature, Lyra totters down the stairs alongside Rick and Cameron, trying hard to ignore the pain in her feet and dragging her teddy along with her.

When they get outside, a car is waiting, engine purring like a kitten. Rick settles into the front parallel seat and Lyra opens the passenger door and climbs in, clicking the seatbelt in.

She winds the window down and rests her head against the glass. She squeezes her teddies neck slightly.

* * *

_Am I hurting you, Teddy? I don't mean to. I'm not like them. I don't mean to hurt people._

* * *

She releases her bear's throat and sighs, closing her eyes. The wind swirls in from the open window, caressing her cheeks and making her hair ripple softly like chocolate coloured silk.

"So, where we headed?" Rick asks the driver.

"Creed wanted you guys to meet him at the courthouse."

Rick pales slightly. Lyra turns to face him, eyes confused. "Courthouse?" She repeats softly.

"Courthouse. Kangaroo court, Lyra. Just stay quiet and say nothing until I say otherwise, understand?" He sounds serious, starkly so.

"Okay." Lyra murmurs softly.

* * *

_Is he going to leave me there? To wallow in promised silence?_

* * *

She runs her tongue over her mouth anxiously. Absently, her hands tighten around her teddies throat again.

Her stomach tightens with something akin to fear and apprehension.

"You said that I would stay with Creed," Lyra says softly.

"Yes."

"So. . . you're leaving me?"

"No. We'll see you now and then, see how you're doing." Rick says softly. He's lying. He isn't looking at her, and his tone is vague.

* * *

_You won't come back, will you?_

* * *

Lyra looks away, feeling sadness creeping into her heart.

"What about my clothes and stuff?" She asks softly.

"I've got them," Cameron says, waving a thick duffel bag around.

Lyra looks down, sniffing softly and secretively wiping tears away.

The car stops before a building of what seems to Lyra to be of massive proportion. Rick and Cameron get out, Lyra hesitantly crawling out. She closes the door behind her and walks quickly, wincing softly at her feet. Her teddy swings in her arm, nails digging into it viciously.

Rick opens the door, watching her she obediently shuffles through it. They walk through a few hallways and corridors before they reach a long room filled with people. Their cheering is loud, making her ears ring slightly, but still Lyra retains her silence.

She passes through the room quietly, Rick and Cameron shoving through the crowd and ensuring she is not trampled upon. She glances up at a ridiculously high podium/desk thing and sees a pale-faced man with glasses. He looks around and catched sight of her. They maintain eye contact for several seconds before Lyra has to break it off to go into another room.

She finds her heart is fluttering in her chest. She licks her lips nervously. A few more rooms later and she is forced to sit on a rickety chair, facing a man with creamy pale skin and slicked back brown hair. The hair is unbecoming of him.

Lyra glances into his eyes, unsurprised to find they are a bland shade of blue.

He looks at her expectantly, eyes grazing over her.

"So," He says. His voice is surprising thick, if bland. She thinks his accent his American. "You're little Lyra."

She winces at the nickname. "Just Lyra," She contradicts quietly, knowing she is breaking her promise-

* * *

_But don't promises mean nothing to you, Rick?_

* * *

But unable to stop herself in any case.

Creed smiles, and just like his eyes, it is bland. Ugly, to be frank.

She doesn't know what to do, so she simply bows her head down and plays with her bear's ears, tugging them softly.

"Well, Lyra. I used to be a doctor." He says, leaning back in his rickety chair.

"Used to be." Lyra cuts him off abruptly as she repeats. "Why did you stop?"

"I didn't." He replies, his smile widening a notch. With a smile like that, she kind of hopes he'll fall of that chair. It'd probably improve his bland face.

"Why use past tense then?" She replies, her lips pouting slightly.

He scowls. "Because I did. Now shut up and let me get on with my examination."

"Does it involve Maths?"

"No!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"You sound over confidant. I think your underqualified too. Maybe I need a new doctor."

"I'm perfectly qualified!"

"And perfectly obviously fired for being _such_ a good doctor," Lyra says, smiling.

"That wasn't through my fault!"

"So whose fault was it?"

" . . . "

"Yeah, I thought so." Lyra silences herself.

"Let's just get this over with, Lyra!" He barks eventually, managing to break through the stupour she had placed him in. She shrugs innocently.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll be quiet and not remind you how much of an epic failure you are." Lyra says sweetly, tilting her head.

His face turns an interesting shade of red.

"Creed," Rick says warningly. "Just get it over with, man."

Creed glares at Lyra and moves forward. "Please, remove your boots."

"Why?"

"Because I need to see your feet."

"Why?"

"To see if there's anything wrong with them."

"What if I don't trust you with my feet?"

"Lyra. . . " Rick warns. Lyra shrugs and sticks a foot into Creed's face.

"I can't take them off by myself." She says innocently. "My feet are too swollen with he bandages."

By this point, Cameron was struggling to keep a straight face. Creed tugs her boots off, and Lyra holds in her soft whimpers of pain. The bandages are slightly pink from blood. Carefully, Creed begins unpeeling the bandages.

Lyra begins to hum the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret's theme song. She stops suddenly when he jarrs her foot, ripping the bandage from it. She howls, eyes immediatley glistening with tears.

"Awww, no," Cameron coes, walking over to her. He wipes her tears, and kisses her cheeks. "Let me kiss it better."

She does. Her lower lip wavers slightly, but she continues to let him wipe her tears.

"You're not so bad," She concedes after he finishes wiping away the last tear. Creed has finished with her feet and now checking over her legs, making Lyra squirm and giggle.

"That tickles," She giggles, kicking out her feet. She accidentally smacks Creed in the face. His face scrunches up and he releases a really weird noise, like something a freight train releases as it goes off the rails.

"Soooow-eeeeee," She whispers, rubbing his kicked forehead with her hand gently. "Soooow-eeeee."

He snorts slightly and continues, this time looking at her feet glaringly to make sure she doesn't kick him again.

Eventually the full examination was over and Lyra was officially turned over into Creed's charge.

"Take care of her," Cameron (S.M) tells Creed. It seems as though Cameron has gotten attached.

"Yeah," Rick says gruffly.

Then they turn around and-

* * *

_Nooo! Don't leave! Please don't leave, please, please, please, don't leave!_

* * *

She sniffles softly, watching them leave and looks up at the foreboding Creed. Tears well in her eyes.

"Oh Lyra." Creed says gleefully, "You've no idea what a clusterfuck you've gotten yourself into."

Lyra blinks. "What's a clusterfuck?" She asks softly, wiping away her tears.

Creed's expression falls slightly. "Never mind."

Lyra shrugs, looking away from him sadly.

"Alright," Creed sighs softly. "let's get you introduced to my men. They'll be training you to fight." He gives her a wicked look. She gets a great view of the dent-like bruise on his head. "They won't take it easy on you." He warns, "And you'll follow me at every other moment and sometimes do things for me. Like taking files to people and whatnot."

**Aaaaah. Did you like it? Did you? Did you? I liked it myself. Let me know in a loving review! LOL. Merry christmas and a happy new year. **


	8. Chapter 8

**Ah. Did you all have a nice Christmas? I did. I decided that you guys needed a new chapter to feed on. But please review them. This is my first story, I want to be in the know of how bad or good I'm doing!**

**Anyways, this chapter will be about Lyra beginning to learn stuff about the new world she's been introduced to. The chosen song for this chapter is, "Paradise," by Coldplay.**

_When she was just a girl _

_She expected the world_

_But it flew away from her reach_

_so She ran away in her sleep _

_And dreamed of _

_Para-para-paradise, _

_Para-para-paradise, _

_Para-para-paradise _

_Every time she closed her eyes _

_When she was just a girl _

_She expected the world_

_But it flew away from her reach_

_And the bullets catch in her teeth _

_Life goes on, it gets so heavy _

_The wheel breaks the butterfly _

_Every tear a waterfall _

_In the night the stormy night she'll close her eyes_

_In the night the stormy night away she'd fly_

_And dreams of _

_Para-para-paradise _

_Para-para-paradise _

_Para-para-paradise _

_Oh oh oh oh oh oh-oh-oh_

_She'd dream of _

_Para-para-paradise _

_Para-para-paradise_

_Para-para-paradise _

_Oh oh oh oh oh oh-oh-oh-oh_

_La-la-la-la-la-la-la_

_La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la _

_And so lying underneath those stormy skies _

_She'd say, "oh, ohohohoh I know the sun must set to rise" _

_This could be Para-para-paradise_

_Para-para-paradise_

_This could be Para-para-paradise_

_Oh oh oh oh oh oh-oh-oh_

_This could be Para-para-paradise_

_Para-para-paradise _

_This could be _

_Para-para-paradise _

_Oh oh oh oh oh oh-oh-oh-oh_

Creed instructs her to go into a room to the left of his for a while. She enters, as per instructed, and finds several tall, heavy muscled men in wait for her.

They say some things, explain that today they will teach her how to fight, and today, they will teach her some defensive movements to escape hits.

One steps forward, a brute of a man, and throws out a loose slow punch, while another comes up behind her and shows her how to swerve her body and duck under the punch. They try it quicker and quicker, and the man behind her releases her.

She tries to do as shown and manages occasionally to duck it. Mostly, she gets hit. Eventually, they move onto foot work and fist work.

She hurts. By the time they are finished with her for the day, her small knuckles are split and bleeding and raw, her eyes tearing up at the pain that wracks her body. She is a multitude of bruises, dark and angry, in the shape of fists and feet.

After being guided back to Creed's room, they stalk off.

She sniffs softly, wiping her nose with her fist. Her fist, now painted and smeared with blood, trembles. She watches as Creed carefully takes in her wounds, idly taking her hand and moving her fingers. She winces, tears dribbling down her cheeks.

"I told you," Creed says absently, "They won't take it easy on you. You need to be ready as soon as possible."

She licks her lower lip slowly, tasting the coppery tang of blood on her lip.

"So when this is over with, they'll come back?"

"Who?" He says.

"My parents." She murmurs.

"I dunno, kid." He says, tapping her fist. She sucks in a breath of pain.

"There. Fixed up. Next time, you might wanna be more vigilant in dodging hits."

"I've never been hit before," She murmurs softly.

"There's a first time for everything," He shrugs. "Soon, you'll learn."

She nods. "I don't have a choice, do I?" She says.

* * *

_I don't think I have choices anymore. I have to do this until they release me. Until they want me again. . ._

* * *

"No." He mumbles. He stands and cracks his neck from side to side. "I've got work to do, Lyra. Take these to Crane."

"Where is he?" She says softly. She blinks, confused. "_Who_ is he?"

Creed chuckles. "The man in the Kangaroo Court with the dark hair and glasses. He's up at the podium. Just go back through the way you came with Rick. In the courtroom, to the left of the door you'll enter in, is a set of stairs that will lead up to him."

He smiles vindictively and hands her a thick file. Her bandaged hands struggle to keep hold of it. She backs out the door and goes back through the corridors, using some of the things she recalls seeing on the way in to find it.

She finds the stairs and quietly creeps up them, struggling to keep her balance. When she reaches the top, the sound of her heavy breathing hidden under the roar of the crowd, she stands beside Crane's chair, waiting for him to notice her.

When he laughs and doesn't notice her, she tugs at his Judge's robe carefully.

"Excuse me? Sir?" She whispers softly. He feels the tugging, and turns around, frowning.

She holds out the file. He takes it, setting it on the desk, before leaning down to see her.

"You seem somewhat. . . " He tilts his head, lips smirking slightly. "Damaged."

She shrugs, her brown eyes flitting down to stare at her feet. She looks back up and he glances at her hands. He flits through the file and nods.

"Bye," She says softly. She turns on her heel and begins to descend the stairs.

"Hey!" Crane calls. She stalls, turning around to face him.

"Yes." She says hesitantly.

"Your name. What is it?"

"Lyra." She says softly.

"Last name?"

She shrugs.

"You don't know?" He sounds disbelieving.

"I don't remember." She replies softly, and then goes on her way back down the stairs.

Yawning softly, she returns to Creed's room, half-asleep. She grabs her teddy from the side.

"The men have done fighting with you now. They'll also be giving you an exercise route in the gym for you to do, so you can get physcially healthy quicker. Unfortunately, you're young. No muscle. They'll have to find something that'll suit your mass and attributes and whatnot. There won't be drugs involved, so it's all going to be you."

Lyra stretches out, nodding tiredly. "Every day?" She asks, yawning.

"Exercise and fighting every Monday and Wednesday, and the weekend, until your body can stand more of it. Otherwise, you'll just be in a lot of pain when it comes to your muscles." He grins, "Of course, there will still be a lot of pain involved in any case."

"What day is it?" Lyra asks after a pause.

"Wednesday." He glances at the clock hanging on the near barren wall. "It's thirteen minutes past three. They'll collect you at four. I don't know, or care, when you'll be back."

Lyra nods. "So, usually, is there a time frame of when I do these things?"

"Training starts at seven and ends at nine. Exercise from four onwards." He shrugs. "Depends how tired you are."

She blinks her heavy lidded eyes. She's very tired now.

* * *

_But I know I have to keep on going. No matter what._

* * *

"It seems I have an hour to kill." She points out.

"So kill it," Creed grunts.

She bites her lip, uncertain of how to. Eventually, she curls up on the floor, teddy in her arms, and sleeps, only to dream of her missing parents and brother. She dream of their return to her, and it's beautiful.

When she wakes, an hour later, to someone shaking her, there are silent tears streaking down her pale cheeks.

She's pulled up to her feet and dragged along through corridors. Eventually, she finds herself in a make- shift gym, filled with the heavy clank of weighs and grunts of exertion and pain. Sweat scents the air strongly, like a sickening, disgusting perfume.

Lyra is given some small weights and shown what to do with them. She does as shown, and is surprised when the weights make her muscles whimper with protest. She still does as told, even though she is crying silently, muscles screaming in tired protest.

"It'll get easier." She is assured by a heavy set young male. She nods, trying hard to believe him. "When it get's totally easy, we'll give you heavier weights."

She yawns softly, feeling tired and exhausted despite her nap. She almost drops the weights.

"I think we need to wake you up," The male teases, taking the weights from her. "Maybe you should take a moment, huh?"

She nods gratefully, blinking sleepily.

"Aw. Look at you," A woman says quietly, kneeling before her. "Tired, chick?"

Lyra nods.

"Don't give up. You've done so well so far, managing as many sets as you have. Just a few more, alright, and then we'll get you something to eat and drink."

Lyra nods, feeling thoroughly exhausted and more than ever like breaking down and crying. She struggles through it, listening to the woman counting down til the last one. Her arm all but collapses, wrist making a soft cracking noise.

"They might break your bones, y'know." The woman says softly. "If you aren't naturally flexible. They liked people with contortionist ability here, and it can be taught through broken bones if it isn't natural."

Lyra swallows. She isn't naturally flexible.

"Really?" She whispers, uncertainly.

The woman dips her head. "Yeah."

Lyra bits her lower lip nervously. Her stomach growls softly.

"Alright." The woman shouts out to the gym. "Lunch time guys!"

Various tins and things are handed out. They seem a little out of date, but nobody seems concerned.

"With Bane taking over, most supplys have been stopped." The woman tells her. "The things we have are restocked on Fridays fortnightly, but even then the products are usually out of date. Finer things are for those higher up in the food chain."

Lyra nods, her plastic spoon digging into the bottom of the cold tin of beans. She eats it hungrily, but slowly, savouring each bite. After not eating on proper schedule for some time, she has taught herself to slow down in eating so she can properly digest food.

* * *

_I'm so tired, so tired, Just Sleep, just want to Sleep, when can I Sleep._

* * *

She yawns again, licking her lips to catch any juices that have missed her probing tongue.

"You'll sleep well tonight," The woman grins. Lyra can only nod slightly, head lolling back. The tin rolls out of her hand and attempts to pick it up only to slump forward, half asleep. Half the gym is watching her, bemused and amused.

The woman takes the can and hands it to someone else before she picks Lyra up.

"I'll take her back." She announces. "Carry on, people."

She has left her teddy with Creed, and she stays awake long enough to grab him before Creed grabs her and takes her into an upper layer into a small apartment. He dumps her on the sofa, leaving her quiltless and cold, but she doesn't mind.

She snuggles up with her teddy bear, her eyes closed and brown hair cascading over the pillow, lips slightly curved. Exhausted as she is, she is asleep mere seconds later.

**I don't know if this story is going too fast. I suspect it may be. I'm also worried that Lyra may be turning Sue. Correct me if I'm wrong on that view. Anyways, I'm basically going to blurr over the events of weeks in the next few chapters and show how she's gradually getting stronger. Then she'll move up eventually and things get harder.**

**Getting harder into the plot will result in longer chapters, as will REVIEWS. **

**So review, please. **


	9. Chapter 9

**Well now; did y'all have a happy new year? Mine was a little boring. Anyway, new chapter. Thank you for reviewing the previous. I love reviews. I could live off them, in an emotional kind of way.**

**The song for this chapter is "Where Butterflies Never Die," by Broken Iris.**

**Float on to the painted sky**

**where we shall be unified**

**as I slip inside**

**Where butterflies... never die**

**Multiply humanity, **

**harmonize insanity, **

**sharing light of remedy, **

**holding Tides of clarity, **

**shattered glass in flower beds,**

**Humanize inhumane ends.**

**It's all the same for The Dreamers,**

**it's all the same... for us...**

**Float on to the painted sky **

**where we shall be unified**

**as I slip inside**

**Where butterflies...**

**Utilize surrenduring, **

**when silence falls, **

**to you it sings,**

**sterilize Your mentality,**

**compromize your reality,**

**Restful mind and peaceful eyes,**

**When sound is gone, then you will find,**

**It's all the same for The Dreamers, **

**it's all the same... for us...**

**Float on to the painted sky **

**where we shall be unified **

**as I slip inside **

**Where butterflies... never die**

She wakes up the morning after, her muscles aching and burning horrendously. She moves, and instantly regrets it as pain seers into her body. Her lips tremble, and she stays perfectly still. She is not used to pain of any kind, and this one particular battles with the pain on her feet, clashing them together violently.

Her eyes fill with tears. She hears footsteps and looks up (Rather slowly, so that the pain won't explode and throb, but rather seep in slowly, stinging but controllable at least) and sees Creed. He looks down at her, looking strangely satisfied.

"Your day off," He says, smiling. "I can see you'll be thankful for it."

His eyes meet hers and he stalks forward, wiping them away with his thumb. "If I were you," He says, "I would not persist in tears. Tears mean nothing here."

She sniffs softly, her eyes still dripping down fresh droplets of salty tears.

"Try stretching," He tells her after a moment. "Releases some of the tension in your muscles."

"It hurts," She whimpers plaintively.

He shrugs, tossing out a simple, "Not my problem," before he walks away. Dragging herself from the sofa, she hisses in pain, whimpering.

Wiping her tears away, she stretches out her arms slowly, tentative of the pain. And the pain comes. Boy does it come. She holds back soft cries and sobs, forcing herself to stretch slowly and properly.

* * *

_I think he lied to me, I think he lied, wants me in pain, this hurts, this hurts so bad. . ._

* * *

She closes her eyes and continues, trying her hardest to ignore the pain sparking inside her body. She forces herself to go through the actions, stretching out everywhere she knows how, and then collapses back onto the sofa, panting.

Her cheeks are wet from a mixture of sweat and tears, and she wipes them, laying her trembling body down to sleep again. It does not come easily, because she has already slept deeply and the pain still slanders her.

Eventually she falls asleep and goes into a dream, a wonderful dream of a beautiful place. . .

_It's set close to dusk, the dark sky is soft and dark purples and greys and blues, studded with silver blots she knows are stars, little and delicate. Grass is thick beneath her feet, long and waving, drifting in a soft breeze. It comes up to her knees. She looks around, expression awed._

_The trees are thick around the place that she is in, and they are covered in an abundance of small flowers. She reaches out, taking a small purple flower from the tree. She holds it, delicately inhaling it. _

_It smells how she remembers their old garden used to; all sweet and summer-y. She crushes the petals in her hand and drops it, watching the petals scatter and drift away, caught hard by a sudden breeze that swirls them around her. _

* * *

_No, pain, no there is no pain here, there cannot be pain because this is my place, my dream. . . _

* * *

_Lyra walks through the fields, looking up at sky. In the thicket of trees, pretty blue butterflies flit around, wings delicate and slightly crumpled, but her attention is on the sky, which has turned a soft illuminative pink shade, with golds and oranges and yellows. . . _

_She sits down on the ground and watches it through the brightly coloured leaves of the trees. The butterflies fly around her and she closes her eyes, smiling. _

Her eyes open, and there, once again, is the pain, violent and unrelenting but still nonetheless, better than it had been. She gets up and stretches again, relieved when the pain eases slightly.

* * *

_What a beautiful dream, I wish I could live in it. . ._

* * *

She looks at the clock, ticking away somberly on the wall. The day is floating away from her all too quickly. It is now five O'clock in the evening, and she wonders how long she has been sleeping.

She winces at her aching body, but it only serves to make her more determined.

* * *

_I have to face the pain, tear it down until it's gone and I can fight, I need to FIGHT._

* * *

Lyra wanders through the room until she happens upon a small meal, made of breed and lemon curd. She pouts slightly, hoping it's for her. She's hungry, and she can feel that her stomach is about to growl.

"Hey, kid," Creed grunts, walking in. He takes off his coat, dumping it onto her sofa. "Sleep alright?"

"Yes, thank you." She replies, still eying the sandwich.

"Eat it, kid. I haven't left it there for the fun of it." He pauses, scowling, "I bought you lemon curd. You better eat the damn crap."

She nods, taking the sandwich and the plate over to her sofa. She sits and eats slowly, feeling drunk on sleep and strangeness and pain.

After she has finished it, she gets up, putting the plate on the small side. She remembers briefly that they are on a second floor, in an apartment like place. She doubts it was made to be an apartment. More like an office-type place, with a meeting room used for a living room.

"If you need to toilet, kid, it's next door but one."

She doesn't need the toilet. But she has become curious about the layout of this place.

"Can I look around?" She asks quietly.

He shrugs, "Whatever. Just don't get into trouble, and if someone tells you to go away, do so. Quickly. If they ask who you are, tell them your Creed's charge."

"'kay." She says softly, getting up. Her muscles protest again, but she is beginning to feel better.

She goes out of the small apartment/ office and begins to walk down the halls. The place looks more and more like it has been trashed; there's several piles of debris and rubble and rubbish, and even glass. She is careful to watch where she steps, fearful of cutting up her already scarred feet.

Glancing at several sheets of paper, she knows she is correct in her earlier assumption of this not being a proper apartment block.

It is a business building of some kind. The words are difficult to understand, but she gets the gist. They have just transformed it for their purposes, whatever they may be.

She finds herself lost pretty quickly, and finds herself standing inside what appears as someone's quarters. It's very meticulously neat, with books and files and things stacked and neatly lined in alphabetical order. She looks at a small wooden desk, reading the file on top.

**Jonathon Crane, A.K.A Scarecrow.**

She frowns, somewhat caught out by the A.K.A.

"Having fun?" A slightly accented voice says abruptly. She turns and looks up at him.

"No, not really," She replies, "I don't know where I am."

"You're in my quarters." Crane bites out, as though she has commited a terrible sin or broken a law.

She blushes, "Sorry. I didn't realise that it turned in to quarters. I was just exploring."

He gives her a cold, speculative look. "Exploring?" He spits out, repeating it like it's something forbidden.

"Yes." She whispers, her heart beginning to flutter in her chest.

* * *

_He's scaring me, he's scaring me, why, why, please stop, why must you look at me that way?_

* * *

"Please stop looking at me that way." She says quietly, stepping back. Her bare feet make a soft padding noise. "It's scaring me."

He laughs suddenly, and she cringes.

"Get out." He orders. She nods, eagerly scampering off to where she entered and exiting it.

"Sorry," She squeaks, before she took off running down the halls. Moments later, she is once again hopelessly lost. She sees a man, tall and skinny with a green suit with a lot of question marks adorning it.

"Excuse me?" She asks timidly. He turns around quickly and energetically, giving her a wide grin.

"What is-"

"Can you help me get back to Creed's quarters? I've lost myself." She says quickly, cutting him off.

He frowns slightly, put out somewhat, but nods.

"Come on," He sighs, walking along. He taps him walking stick as he walks, making it sound out a happy jolting rythm.

"So, what's your name?"

"Lyra." She smiles shyly.

"Lyra," He repeats, adding a slight skip to his step. "Well now, miss Lyra, why are you so far flown from your nest?"

"I was exploring." She explains, trying hard to keep up with him. Her muscles ache again, and she's eager to sleep.

"As good an excuse as any." He sing songs, much to Lyra's amusement. She giggles softly, smiling.

They arrive before Creed's apartment, and she turns, giving him a wide smile, and says, "Thank you."

He nods his head, grinning down at her. "Goodbye, little miss Lyra. I'll see you soon."

He disappears, and if he had a hat, Lyra was willing to bet he would have doffed it. She goes inside Creed's and sits on the sofa, stretching out her arms and snuggling down.

**You may be wondering why I show Crane so much; it's basically because it's his territory she's hanging around it. Oh, FYI, I don't know where the actual courthouse is, but someone told me they thought it was an old building thingy beside the river.**

**When she moves up to the next person in line, which is the Riddler, then Scarecrow, then Joker, then Bane, he won't come in as much. She's kind of protegé learner- get's a bit of everything in her before she gets to Bane. **

**So, he's not really a main. Bane is da main when he comes in. By that point, I'll pretty much be running on no plot, lol. **

**Ideas are welcome. I've never seen the movies, except the first one, so bear with me. Characters not in there, may come to be in here, lol. **


	10. Chapter 10

**Oh my goodness. You guys are lovely! I'm really beginning to enjoy myself with the story because of these lovely reviews. The song for this chapter is called, "Swanheart," By Nightwish. **

**All those beautiful people  
I want to have them all  
All those porcelain models  
If only I could make them fall**

**Be my heart a well of love**  
**Flowing free so far above**

**A wintry eve**  
**Once upon a tale**  
**An Ugly Duckling**  
**Lost in a verse**  
**Of a sparrow's carol**  
**Dreaming the stars**

**Be my heart a well of love**  
**Flowing free so far above**

**In my world**  
**Love is for poets**  
**Never the famous balcony scene**  
**Just a dying faith**  
**On a heaven's gate**

**Crystal pond awaits the lorn**  
**Tonight another morn for the lonely one is born**

She takes in soft even breaths as she huddles into her coat, teddy bear safely held in her arms. It's another day off tomorrow, she remembers abruptly as she lies down. Another day of trying to relax her aching muscles and thinking of something to do. She doesn't really know what she _can_ do here.

There isn't much she can think of, in any case. She stretches out and lightly nudges the armrest with her toes. She wonders if they have any pencils she can draw with; drawing has always been something her mother adored.

When Creed comes in, she rises up into a sitting position, neatly tucking her feet underneath a cushion. The cushion is weird, either very badly made or very old if the odd contorted stuffing is to go by.

"Can I draw?" She asks softly, her brown eyes large and beseeching. She does not expect him to say yes, but she longs for him to do even so.

He shrugs. "I don't know, can you?"

"Can you manage a sentence without being sarcastic?" She rebukes softly.

He shrugs again, "Doubtful."

"So can I draw, or can I not?" She sighs, tilting her head. Her brown curls, bouncing loosely around her shoulders, tumble slightly, the curls and spirals springing slightly. It's an odd, slightly captivating moment.

He grunts, "If it shuts you up." and disappears briefly, reappearing with a sheath of paper and a pen.

"There's only pen." He says, tossing it to her. She dives for it and catches it before it falls to the floor. He throws the sheath (Luckily still in its packing, or else it would have fluttered apart.)

She shrugs. "Anything will do."

She unwraps the paper and kneels down onto the floor, uncapping the pen and beginning to lightly sketch out a butterfly, lightly patterned with swirls and streaks of ink smudge.

* * *

_One of the pretty ones, the pretty ones from the dream, oh that beautiful dream. . . I wish I could live in it._

* * *

Lyra is not a very good artist. If anything, she is good, but abstract. Her lines are rough and jagged, making the butterfly look as though bullets have torn through its wings, but still, it looks as it should. In an interested, dissected wings sort of way. By the time she has finished, her fingers are smudged with black ink, her mouth stained with it from where she sucked the pen idly (Resulting in an odd bitter taste filling her mouth) and even inky prints on her knees.

She sighs softly, dropping the now half-chewed pen on the floor. She looks at the image forlornly.

* * *

_Not as good as you. I will never be as good as you, mum. . ._

* * *

She runs her tongue over her lips and stands. She glances down at her inky hands sighs.

She grabs the paper file, dumping them on the sofa. Lyra bounds off towards the bathroom, soaping them up brutally and scrubbing her hands until the pigment has left her skin completely. Leaning back, she looks at the window. The day is passing so quickly and wonders if one day she will look back at these memories and boredom as someone else completely.

* * *

_Will you be there? With me, looking back to see what you missed out on? Maybe. But if you never loved me, maybe by then I'll won't love you anymore._

* * *

Inhaling briefly, she wanders out of the bathroom to find Creed staring at her drawing.

"What?" She asks softly.

"It's bloody weird, kid." He replies. She freezes, mouth gaping at the statement. She's a little surprised.

"What?" She manages to say eventually.

"It's scary. I mean, it's like a butterfly that been's torn apart and left to bleed out ink blood."

Lyra sighs softly. "It's not very good."

"It's actually alright," Creed says, giving her a sharp glance as though daring her to contradict this. She merely shrugs, helpless.

"How's the aching?" He says eventually, as though to dispose of the inevitable silence building between them.

"It's fading."

"Good. It'll be aching again soon, but if you can sleep through the majority you should be fine."

She inclines her head, brown curls tumbling forward. "It is better to sleep through it," She murmurs.

He nods, seeming pleased that she agrees. "Good girl." He says simply. She clambers back on the sofa, sighing softly. She isn't tired yet, but she knows she'd better get as much sleep as possible. Especially with dreams so beautiful flowing through her mind. She can't sleep.

She tries, she honestly tries, squeezing her eyes shut, but she's simply too awake. She's restless. Her eyes flutter open every few seconds and she moves all the time, trying to get herself comfortable enough to sleep.

"We'll have to give you something to do on days like these." Creed mutters thoughtfully, distracted from his writing by her constant shifting. "You'll learn about this kind of stuff better from Crane, when you're learning from under him. You're just with me to learn fighting basics and about your bodies limits."

She nods, staring at the ceiling.

"Can you read?" He asks eventually. She nods.

"Uh-huh."

She gets up suddenly and begins to bounce on the sofa, trying to relieve herself from her energetic burst of giddiness.

Creed scowls, brining out his phone. He bites out something into it, and a few minutes later the door opens. The woman from the gym grins at her. "Hey there, little Lyra!" She grins, reaching out to her and grabbing her in her arms for a quick hug. "Tell you what, chick, since you've all that energy, and your aches seem to have worn away, how 'bout you and I go for a quick little work out in the gym."

Lyra gives her a horrified look, and she laughs. "C'mon," She teases, "It's just a bit of dancing!"

Lyra perks up. She_ likes_ dancing. "What kind of dancing?" She asks eagerly, her eyes glittering.

The woman grins,"Every kind you want." She takes Lyra's hand and leads her away easily, chattering away about music and whatnot.

When they find themselves in the gym (Almost empty of people) the woman goes over and ducks behind a piece of equipment. Seconds loud and loud reverberating beat thunders through the room, startling Lyra. She gasps slightly and then giggles. The gym workers give her amused looks as they continue onwards, unperturbed by the music.

"My name's Jenny, by the way!" The woman calls, beginning to stretch out her body. Lyra copies quickly, beginning to like stretching. It hurt sometimes, but after a while it became fun. She watched Jenny as she began to move to the beat, copying her movements slowly. When Jenny knew that she had gotten the beat, the movements got faster, until they were moving and whirling around so fast that Lyra's head spun.

She collapsed down to the ground, laughing as the world spun heavily around her. Jenny stops, smiling and laughing too. She goes over to Lyra, reaching out a hand and helping up the dizzy girl.

Lyra grins.

"Fun, right?" Jenny calls over the loud beat of the music.

"Yeah!" Lyra enthuses, her eyes wide and smile wide, revealing her small pearly teeth. One of her canines is chipped, in an adorable kind of way, and for a moment Lyra is confused when her tongue pokes at it. She raised her fingers to her mouth, a look of dread of her expression. She finds that the tooth is stil there and relaxes slightly before realising that it must have broken slightly.

Her expression turns distraught. "Something's wrong with my tooth!" She wails, opening her mouth wide to show Jenny.

"It's Okay, it's only chipped," Jenny laughs. "They're just baby teeth anyway."

Lyra sucks in a breath and her face crumples slightly. Jenny bends down, "Hey now," She says softly, "It's alright. You're alright, Lyra."

She holds her gently in her arm and rocks her, gently murmuring soothing things. Eventually, Lyra calms down, wiping the tears from her large brown eyes and looking at Jenny.

"You look like Bambi," Jenny tells her suddenly, her lips curving into a smile.

Lyra pouts slightly, sticking out her lower lip and folding her arms. Jenny laughs, ruffling her hair carefully. "Tell you what, kid. It's Thursday, and you don't get another bout of working out and fighting til tomorrow. I don't think you'll want to drag yourself through tomorrow feeling like hell by excessive exercise. Why don't we relax and watch a movie or something?"

Lyra's eyes brighten up again and she bounces around on her feet. If she had a tail it'd be wagging a mile a minute. "Yeah!" She beams, still bouncing slightly.

"Alright. We'll head over to my place. I gotta laptop brimming with movies."

"'Kaaaaay!" She calls, grinning widely.

The two of them turn over and begin walking through to the lower quarters of the building until they came into a small little room with a homemade bed of torn mattresses and quilts are nested. A bag is tucked securely behind a cabinet, which Jenny picks up and lugs over to the bed. She pulls Lyra down onto the bed, giggling.

"What do you wanna watch? Huh?" She asks, flicking down the movie list.

Lyra sucks in an excited breath and beams out a rather loud and exuberant, "Anastasia!"

Seeing as the laptop wasn't really Jenny's, she didn't really know what was on it. But she was glad there were at least movies suitible for Lyra. She set it up and they snuggled into the blankets.

* * *

_It's feel like she's my mum. . ._

* * *

Lyra eventually grows sleepy as the movie progresses, and, nestles her head on the pillows, half-asleep. Exceedingly comfortable in the warm, Jenny herself had long since fallen asleep, and was snoring softly, much to Lyra's amusement. Lyra sighs as the movie finishes, wriggling her way free of the blankets.

She stands up and looks down at Jenny for a moment before she walks out of the door, her hair ruffled and clothes tangled around her small body.

Several people smirk at her as they pass her, some even pausing to snicker softly before they pass on.

She gets lost before long, but doesn't let it bother her, simply yanking on a man's arms and asking softly if he'll take her back to Creed's quarters. The man grunts and shoves her off his arm. She yelps in surprise, her brown eyes wide and filling with tears.

He just snorts and stomps off.

"Bastard!" She shouts after him. She learnt the word accidentally from her father, and the two of them had always joked about swears. She knew that if it wasn't her father or friend, then the person would be offended. The man stiffens but stalks forward, scowling deeply.

Lyra's face crumples softly and she clasps her hands over her face.

Eventually, Creed comes to find her and takes her back home.

**Ah! Hola! Thank you for reading. Please review, favourite, whatever, just something, lol! Hope you liked!**

**~BlueHeartedQueen.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Awww! You guys! You guys are lovely! Thank you to everyone that favourited or alerted and review! The song for this chapter is, "Before the Dawn," by Evanescence.**

**Meet me after dark again and I'll hold you**

**I am nothing more then to saviour of that **

**And maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away **

**We'll be lost before the dawn**

**If only night could hold you, where i can see you, my love**

**Then let me never ever wake again **

**And maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away**

**We'll be lost before the dawn**

**[Chorus]**

**Somehow I know that we can't wake again from this dream**

**It's not real, but it's ours**

**Maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away **

**We'll be lost before the dawn**

**Maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away**

**We'll be lost before the dawn**

**[Chanting]**

**[Music fades out]**

She fights. At least- she tries to fight. Her punches are weak compared to those of her aggressors, and she cannot so much as inflict as defend. She holds up her arms and ducks and dodges in quick succession, but still she is beat down upon.

She tries her hardest, biting down on her cries of pain and tuning out everything but her opponents. The pain is inevitable, but she learns quickly. Days pass by quickly here, and despite it only having passed by but a few weeks, she is quickly learning.

She hurts everywhere most days, but the days she fights, the days she can defend herself and force herself into action and the adrenaline burns bright enough to scald away her pain. Her heart thunders in her chest, an everlasting rhythm.

The timer goes off shrilly, and Lyra stumbles to a halt, wiping blood from her nose and licking her lips. She pants heavily, tightening the band around her hair.

"Kid, you're getting a lot better at defense." One of them states, flexing his muscles and cracking his neck. "Next time, we'll get you onto a more offensive fighting technique."

Lyra nods, licking up the salty blood from her mouth. "Okay." She says, flashing him a quick but pained grin.

She doesn't know who he is- often, it is a different person, who does not know what she has previously learn and does not endeavour to be kind when fighting her. It circles back around to previous people as the days turn by.

She knows that he is a good teacher even so. They are all good teachers in their own right. She nurses a split knuckle, her mind stitching together the plan to sort out her wounds. Creed, as a doctor has begun to teach her how to nurse her own wounds correctly.

That is Creed's purpose- to give her a crash course of how to know medically how to look after herself. The Riddler, whom she has been informed will be taking her under his wing next, will teach her logics and a higher state of intelligence. Scarecrow, sciences and psychology. Joker. . . chaos, apparently, and how to fight at a better standard. Finally, there is Bane. She'll learn finally under him how to protect him.

Sighing, Lyra rubs a hand over her knuckle, raising it to lick the blood away. Her tongue flicks out, rough and somehow smooth textured, like a cats and licks it away quickly before she wipes her hand on her coat and begins to stretch out her muscles. She has weights to lift later, and she knows that if this isn't done correctly, she will end up injured.

Injured is no good to Bane.

She goes back to Creed and into the bathroom, where he keeps the first aid kit, and takes it out. She glances into the mirror, looking at her soft rosy cheeks and lean body, which is fast developing a strength she has never known before. Lyra blinks, and watched her brown eyes, which are still so soft and warm and gentle, flecked with warm swirls of gold and brown, despite the hardness she knows fronts.

She firstly cleans the split knuckles, watching the blood ooze out slightly. She hisses softly as she squirts an anesthetic spray onto it,and quickly puts a plaster onto it. Her nose wrinkles suddenly and she sneezes softly.

She smooths the plaster over, nudging out the wrinkles in it dutifully if anything.

* * *

_If I was a clean girl, a strong girl, would you consider coming home? If you did wouldn't it be too late for you by the time you get here?_

* * *

She glances in the mirror and inhales softly, breathing in her own sweet scent. It's sickly, sometimes, even to her, like sweets (Boiled sweets, maybe?) and candy. She doesn't like candy anymore.

Jenny gave her some yesterday, a pack of out-of-date boiled sweets she felt obligated to suck her way through despite herself. It tasted disgusting, and stuck to her tongue. No. She doesn't like candy anymore.

She twists the tap and cups water in her palms, splashing it up onto her sweaty face. She shivers at the cool, but doesn't shriek and move away as she once did. It's cool and sweet right now, just what she needs.

She swallows some and then towels her face dry.

"Creed?" She calls. "Do you have that book for me?"

She hears a grunt in response. It's a book she's taken on reading (Along with a dictionary at her side) about bone structure and muscle and whatnot. It was (While difficult) interesting to read if anything.

She goes to the living room and picks it up, liberally carrying it over to the sofa and sitting on it, cross-legged and comfortable. The aching in her muscle is despicable, but at the moment, welcome. It was quickly becoming familiar to her. Now, it would seep into the back of her mind and she would all but forget until she had nothing else to focus extensively on to.

Of course, it (the pain) wasn't taken from her body. She still felt it nudging in the back of her body, seering in her blood when she moved too suddenly. But it was dulled when she was still, when she had her book. She plays at being a statue, back ramrod straight and hair falling down her shoulders in wild curls.

Creed often forced her to brush it before she left the apartment, but she often just shrugged him off with wide doe-like eyes and a sweet little smile. He doesn't like that she does not submit to him in such ways, but, short from holding her down and ripping through her curls with a hairbrush, he doesn't do anything about it. He has warned her that others will not be as lenient.

Lyra just pointed out that they probably care about her hair and appearance, but more or less her actual fighting and knowledge. He scowled. He scowls a lot.

After a while, sighing, she scrapes her hair back into a loose ponytail with a frayed, filthy ribbon she found on a pretty much destroyed doll (She was exploring the new Gotham outside with a group of people who were teaching her Gotham's streets when she found it. She untied it from the doll and wound her hair into a ponytail.)

* * *

_And they stared through windows, dark and distorted and afraid, and I wondered if they were safe, if they would hurt me. I wouldn't let them hurt me. . ._

* * *

-and stood up, licking her dry lips. She stretches out, cracking her wrists. When she is sufficiently strong, Creed has told her (Or rather, affirmed) that they will break her bones to make her a contortionist if they are not flexible enough. She knows she can't be flexible enough, but she has begun to slowly rotate her wrists slowly and stretch out in yoga styles despite this.

It helps her muscles relax more anyway.

She clicks her tongue slowly and wonders at the christmas tree she struggled so valiantly to put it up. Is it still there? Has it been broken down under the weight of the weather, the baubles cracked and shattered and splintered with cold, the fake pines frosted completely off the branches?

Has the snow fallen through the window enough to create some kind of indoor field? The thought is somewhat amusing, if a little sad.

She walks through the corridors that she has come to know until she finds herself in the gym. Her small arms twinge in protest as she picks up a weight and begins, somewhat slowly, with her work out.

She has come to settle on a pattern with a work out; first she does her weights. Then she uses the machines that will work on her legs and torso and arms, (Mind, it is a difficult feat because of her small size) somewhat strained at the prospect of using such big machines that could easily fall and crush her little body to smithereens, before finally, she will pick several more weights to finish up with before she jogs and other such things.

She went through the pattern, the hours moving by slowly and her body moving by just as slowly. She sweats and hisses with pain, crying sometimes through it when the pain overcomes her. But still she continues, because she is told the pain is good, the pain means progress.

* * *

_No pain, no gain, Lyra dearest._

* * *

She collapses at the end, with barely enough energy to move, shivering and moaning softly with pain. Blood wells up once again from her hands, which have been bruised heavily from equipment that grates and moves against them. Her hands are so delicate, so young skinned, that they tear easily.

Her feet, covered in small white scars from her christmas tree incident, still ache, and sometimes when she wakes, she feels phantom pains in her foot from where she had stepped in the sharp blades of glass.

Occasionally (Though not often, as she is told that she would do better to work with various knifes and swords than guns if she is to be beside Bane, who values honour more than her life) she is taught how to use different guns, something she practises at for hours at a time. When she uses knives, she knows she would do better to learn from this, "Bane" person.

The others are jagged and shredded in movements that should be smoothly elicited from the wrist to radiate onwards through the knife.

Oh yes. Time does fly. Days blur away as she fights and learns, and the nights entwine with thorns and roses into her soul- a perfect mingling of nightmares and dreams. Both, in her eyes, are beautiful.

Once she would have been afraid at some of the dreams she know has, but now she embraces them- with no one to coddle you from them and the baddest (Not in her eyes, but in her mothers- her mother was always against causing others harm, the one that called them the baddest people) people to tell you that they weren't real, you grew to believe them.

Nightmares were nothing more than a kind of intricate dream. Intoxicating. She is told that the less she fears, the more the Scarecrow and Crane will want to discover what she fears. She doesn't mind that- she has heard of his toxin.

She doesn't understand the fear. It would only hold her down, if she understood it, so she doesn't try. She just remains in her distinctive world, one where pain and horror and beauty and dreams shift to create it to her liking. A child's dream.

* * *

_I know this dream, a dream where there is nothing but the darkest treasure, but even blood red ruby's are precious and wonderful- their are many who wastes their lives from them, only to die. Surely the beauty of the dream is worth it?_

* * *

She can't quite remember how she got here. Lyra doesn't want to. It's just a pattern- a pattern she has to beat. She fist's up her hand and hits at the punching bag. She gets stronger all the time. She gets older. The days that pass by in the blink of an eye are those that define a person, because the person will begin to fade with those rapid blinks.

She hasn't faded. She becomes defined. She becomes intelligent. She learns of the body and how to heal it and splinter broken bones and things. Her hands are small against the small blade she is given, but her instructions

* * *

_No matter how sickening they are, I just want to go back home. I can't remember their faces, and, mum, I tried so hard to remember you. . ._

* * *

are clear. She does not disappear. Still she cannot see the person lying on the mortuary slab as anything less than alive (She still does not know what death is, and cannot recognise it) and under some kind of heavy anesthetic.

She is given clear instructions on how to cut the body, and she follows them to the letter, afraid that the person (Already dead) will die if she misses a note on the piano that is the body.

She wipes the lazily trickling blood away as she works, her brown eyes glancing up at the corpse's closed ones in worry.

* * *

_If I die before I wake, I pray the Lo- But who is the Lord? What is a soul? What is death?_

* * *

She wonders at the things that happen around her. She asks questions about the Lord, but finds that most people do not answer her, or answer her in terms that are not exactly in good adversay to the Lord (Whoever the Lord is). She remembers something to do with a man called God, but she cannot remember who God is, or if he even exists. She dubs him fiction in the end.

Jenny herself has told her she does not believe in the Lord, or souls. She doesn't answer when Lyra asks her of death.

Eventually, Creed tells her to stop asking her questions. She obeys, but more out of respect for everyone else than Creed himself.

Life continues, and she continues with it, bending to her lifes will. Her fighting gets harder as her persuers throw everything they have at her, but with her small size and newly given techniques, she can now land injury sucessfully. Of course, in order to attack, she leaves small parts open, which are abruptly taken care of in the worst respects. Her weights only get heavier.

She's usually covered in bruises and shaking. She can do nothing but count the days until she moves onto the Riddler, who's strong intellect will be of great use to her. (Or so Creed tells her.)

Riddler's goons are better at fighting then Creed. She isn't certain that she's ready for them, but isn't that the point? That she evolves in a way that means she will eventually defeat the best and knock pawns off the chessboard?

She doesn't know. Her mind flies when she isn't anchored. She's young, she knows. She's small and never seems to get taller. It means that people underestimate her, and that pleases her.

The Summer when she is told to pack her things is hot, incredibly so. She's heard that the snow is melting, but she hasn't bore witness to it. She's to be collected and taken away. Creed is, of course, incredibly pleased about this.

But as she's packed her stuff, she finds that he has somehow managed to steal her bear away. When she goes looking, she stares in wonder, eyes wide and happy. Creed is busy stitching up a newly plushed out teddy. Good as new.

She takes teddy and smiles, glad that she's never left her teddy behind. She loves her teddy. She pressed a soft kiss against his cheek and his lips twitch, the nearest that he ever gets to smiling.

"Thank you," She whispers. Scarecrow, or Crane (She's never sure which person she is addressing) have both been cool towards her since her trip into his apartment. He nods his head however, glancing her over.

"You'll be a good one when you come to me." He tells her. "And even better when you leave me."

She nods, smiling at him. It isn't like she's moving away (She's just in another part of the complex, part that Creed never enters and is too awry to ever do so) but it feels like she is. She's moving to the Riddler's complex.

She offers him her hand, in a way she has seen Creed do, and he smirks and takes it, shaking it gently before it drops it.

She smiles again and grabs her teddy out her bag, squeezing the teddy into her chest as the Riddler appears, giving her a wide grin she associates purely with a Cheshire cat.

In a way this feels bad; cold and clammy, like she's stepped out into colder water and thinks she is about to drown. But in way this feels good; warm and jittery, because she knows that as she takes this step, she moves further to her target.

It's all about going home.

**Hey guys! I hope you liked that. It was a little longer than I usually write, so if you want longer chapters, review and tell me so!**

**I know this chapter basically flies by, but I wanted to make some progress and move over to the Riddler now. Yes. The Riddler. Which means as soon as he, Scarecrow and Joker's off the list, we move down to Bane. Which we all want, yes?**

**Also, does anyone have any clue about how old Lyra should be about now? I keep trying to come up with an age, but I never get anyway. She looks nine in my eyes, but I think she's a few years older, especially if she's starting to get a small bit of muscle. (A couple of months have passed since she was taken, but she doesn't know that)**


	12. Chapter 12

**Hey guys! I'm so, so, so sorry that I haven't updated in so long! I promise I will write this as quickly as I can and a little longer than usual to make up for lost time. So here we go! Please review! Song is, "Forever yours," By Nightwish. It's supposed to represent Lyra's emotional state, what with being numb, but at the same time being in pain from the training and whatnot. Basically her whole situation.**

**_Fare thee well, little broken heart_**

**_Downcast eyes, lifetime loneliness_**

**_Whatever walks in my heart will walk alone_**

**_Constant longing for the perfect soul_**

**_Unwashed scenery forever gone_**

**_Whatever walks in my heart will walk alone  
No love left in me, no eyes to see the heaven beside me_**

**_My time is yet to come, so I'll be forever yours  
Whatever walks in my heart will walk alone  
No love left in me, no eyes to see the heaven beside me_**

**_My time is yet to come, so I'll be forever yours  
No love left in me, no eyes to see the heaven beside me_**

**_My time is yet to come, so I'll be forever yours  
Whatever walks in my heart will walk alone  
Whatever walks in my heart_**

As anticipated, the Riddler's men are somewhat more brutal in their fighting technique and are somewhat stronger than even she had expected. The first time she fights, she finds herself beaten black and blue. Satisfyingly enough, she manages to land a few hits every now and then, but they are few and far between and even at her speed and size, she finds it more difficult to move and weave.

Hissing in pain, she stands at the end of the, 'lesson' her stomach bruised a dark purple yellow and cheek swollen and hurting like hell. The men do not speak to her often, only to shout out instructions on what she must do, on how much stronger she must become.

She picks up her teddy from where it lies on the ground, squeezing its paw hard and trying to control her harsh breathing, which wheezes in and out in each breath.

She is given and first aid kit and left alone. Of course, she knows what to use.

She tends to herself, stretches out her body, and leaves to go the Riddler.

* * *

Later, Lyra sits opposite the Riddler, her eyes staring at his pieces, her lips slightly pursed as she attempts to think about how she could defeat the current dismal position she had found herself in. She could move the pawn, but it would only be a sacrifice and a worthless one at that.

It would gain her nothing. Her eyes skim the board and she gives a contemplative noise. The castle, she could take his knight with. But that would leave her castle, a strong player in chess, vulnerable to him.

"Come on now." The Riddler purrs, looking at her almost smugly, "Think."

She inhales softly, brown eyes soft and downcast, "You've trapped me into making sacrifice," She says softly.

He nods. Of course he has. That is how the Riddler is so successful; he knows how to trap people into making sacrifices that will suit his purposes. In this knowledge, the knowledge of defeat, she hangs her head and swallows. She makes the sacrifice and he takes her King. He wins.

"You're getting better," The Riddler says, as if he has to say something to lift her spirits. Truthfully, she knows she has gotten better. She glances at her teddy bear, where it sits on the counter, paws hanging over the counter as it slumps down.

"But I still won," He continues, unable to stop the gloating that slips through his lips. And that's fine. He can gloat till the cows come home for all she cares. When she eventually manages to defeat him, she will be the one gloating.

She sighs, looking out through the grimy window. Sunlight, grey and bleak, filters through. The Riddler sucks on his lip thoughtfully, "Another game," He suggests.

Another game of what? Of chess or checkers? What does it matter? He simply wants to play with her and she does not feel she can beget him for that.

She raises her head, leaning out to take her teddy and settling it on her lap. She rests her head on its head and then murmurs an obedient, "As you wish."

He stands up and, after a slight hesitation; she does to, smoothing down her jeans and sitting the bear down in her place.

"What game would you like to play?" She asks, already attempting to guess what it is before he says it. It would a game of intellect if anything. Mental Maths, perhaps. He always seems so delighted when she gets his number correct.

Of course, he does not think up easy questions, and more often than not they are his namesake, riddles of the hardest variety. His words are clear and articulate, and she knows that the more she thinks on it and the more she strives to figure out the answer, the more information she will tuck away in her brain. Soon, she will become that all so empowering word that the Riddler adores so; intelligent.

She is intelligent for her age, that much she does know, and she likes hearing him praise her. He feels almost like her older brother did. Her older brother has almost been entirely ripped out of the picture, so to speak, in favour of the Riddler. In fact, she makes her own picture, ripping out the old family members she can barely remember (Or, if she does remember, she pastes over them, to remember only in her dreams in blurred outlines and shadows) and putting over characters who seem to almost fill the void in their place.

She plays with him well into the night, until she is tired and almost devoid of caring. He sends her off to a small bed, which she curls up on gratefully, raggedy, musty scented quilts settling over her heavily.

The smell is quite distracting, but still, she sleeps. She has become used to it.

When she wakes, she does so to the Riddler's animated mutterings. She gets up, kicking off the musty quilt and wincing at the smell. She dresses in her jeans and top (She had been brought a small nightie in which she sleeps in via the Riddler) and stands, peering through the door. He's inventing something again, and blueprints are spread out over the table.

She walks through the door, feet pattering softly on the ground. Her muscles ache, but she no longer complains. She is the not the same little girl she was when she first arrived in this building.

Riddler looks at her, baring his white teeth into a grin, "Looks like you got yourself a helluva beating."

She nods compliantly. "Eventually, I'll be the one doing the beating."

The Riddler's laughs at that, leaning down to ruffle her hair playfully, "Good girl."

Lyra draws in a soft breath. Since she had left Creed, she had been training every day. Guaranteed, she had gotten a lot better, but she had also been in a lot of pain because of it. She had only been here a month, maybe two of the calendar hanging on the wall was correct.

Cracking her knuckles, she stretches out her muscles, giving a low humming noise as she did so. Running her hand through the thick tangle of brown hair, she attempted to unknot with her fingers, only to find that it tore the strands apart and made her hair seem all the more untidy. She almost missed that nasty nasty hairbrush Creed had made her occasionally brush her hair with.

* * *

She tastes blood in her mouth but she does not spit it out, choosing to ignore it until she has chance to spit it out without getting the crap beat out of her. She ducks under a heavy punch, slyly slipping between her attackers legs and kicking at the back of his shins. He yells with anger, spinning around, and she's very happy she's only fighting him because one on one she can handle at the least, despite his bulk.

_Well_. Bulk as in_ size_, not_ muscle_. Still, there was method to her slippy sliddy movements. She was hoping that he would pull himself down eventually from trying to catch her.

Eventually, he trips over his own feet and lands on his face. She stands back, breathing hard, and tucks back her curly hair. Of late, it only seems to be getting curlier, and it kind of reminds her of an afro.

She cracks her knuckles, spits out the blood and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. She smells of sweat and blood.

Still, she takes her surprised applauding in her stride and walks on to the gym. She chooses her vices and begins her usual quick fast paced work out. It always hurts these days, but she finds herself numb unto her hurt.

Sucking in her breath, she lifts her weighs, she punches the bag and remembers to breathe.

Later she baths herself using a washing up bowl with cool water and a sponge and jug, cleaning her hair as best as she can with the washing up liquid (The Riddler says that with things being the way they are, he cannot afford to give her such luxuries. When she is with Bane, she suspects this will only get worse) and soap. It smells like lemon, the only positive thing she has managed to find about it. That and it makes bubbles. Lots of bubbles.

Occasionally, she allows herself to play around with them, blushing when she hears herself giggling.

* * *

_Good fun, good fun! We all love good fun, don't we, teddy?_

* * *

And of course they do love good fun. She makes it so.

She finishes her bath and then dries herself before dressing, this time in some of the old clothes she brought with her, the ones she does not use until after she has battled and bathed, so to speak. Sometimes, if she does not bathe, she does not dress in them, such as this morning. She does not like those days.

When she leaves the bathroom, she is taken to the Riddler's cronies, not for more fighting, but instead more or less for increasing her stomach for gory events. She doesn't like it and it makes her sickened and sad, but she watches. She watches and becomes used to it. The screams become little more than a faint reminder of somebody's pain and eventually not even that.

She is given this knife today, however, and she holds in uncertainly, told to do to the man what she has in the past done to corpses. She tries, but the man struggles and screams and she ends up doing more damage to herself through trying to cut correctly into his skin.

"Don't mind his pain, Lyra. His pain doesn't matter and when he dies, he won't feel it anymore," One of them says, looking almost anticipating.

She looks at him and bites her lip. She does as bid, cutting through him as he struggles. The cuts are uneven and jagged because of his movements, and she fights to the urge to blame him out loud for the mess. When she is finished with trying to cut him open, he is a mess and so is she. She is shaking, cold with blood and distantly-

* * *

_I'll have to get another bath-_

* * *

she knows this is another milestone that she has crossed.

Looking at the man, Lyra wonders if this is what death is- the complete leave of senses from the body. But by now she is beginning to learn better than that. Her knowledge of death seems impossible that someone should disappear so completely and she can't quite swallow it.

She inhales exhales and walks away to get another bath.

This done, water tainted ruby-red, she redressed herself for the third time today and hopes nothing more will become of her clothes, which are familiar if ragged and patched. She still has everything that was brought with her, save a few items here and there, and even though she has managed to outgrow a few of them, her slender form mostly fits into everything else.

She wears her yellow coat and stands on her tip toes in front of the mirror, seeing the differences that she has managed to ignore for the first time in a while.

She has grown taller, her cheeks slim and softly defined rather than softly curved cheeks she came with. Her lips have less off a pout and more of a grim line. Her skin is slightly greyer than white these days and is still hued with red flush from her vigorous scrubbing, her body thin but stronger looking. Her hair is a wild tangle of dark chocolate-brown snarls and twists, like a wildly accented hedge. Her eyes seem the only thing to remain the same.

* * *

_I look like a ghoul_

* * *

With all these changes to devoutly displayed on the outside, she cannot help but wonder if anything has changed on the inside. Except, of course, her muscles. She smiles slightly at that, pleased that she is becoming stronger. She cannot always remember why she seeks to become stronger in terms of her origin, but knows with a refreshing certainty that she does it for the man she is yet to meet; Bane.

She has been told this many times, instructed. In time, she will be honed as sharp as a sword under his instruction. They are not certain (Lyra included) why she is to be trained, but she suspects many a time that they do it because they are bored, or simply because they know she_ can_ be trained.

Perhaps she is mere amusement, perhaps she is to be protection for when the masses of people that are Gotham become so frenzied that they launch an all out attack on Bane and his men. Strong as they are, Lyra knows that there are many more of the people outside this. . . _haven_, as it were, than people inside.

Her toes hurt from lifting her so she settles back down onto her feet, somewhat amazed that she has become tall enough to actually see herself in the mirror when she tip toes than have to use a stool to stand on.

She wonders how tall she will actually get before she stops growing. _Not very tall_, Creed once told her. She shakes her head, sighing softly. Her stomach aches with hunger and a slight haze muffles over her head. She knows that it is but a small concussion, possibly left over from the previous night, and opens the medicine cabinet, taking out some aspirin and dry swallow.

The taste is nasty, not unlike the cod liver oil that the Riddler swallows down by the mouthful.

She looks out the window and then goes to her bed. Sleep will bring both dreams and energy, taking away what ails her.

She settles in, closes her eyes

* * *

_My eyes are still the same. I wonder why they stay, stay the same?_

* * *

and breathes in softly. Eventually, she falls into sleep.

_The dream is a street, quite literally, empty and abandoned of life. A thick fog drifts over it, and occasionally she sees soft silhouttes and shadows, but she feels no fear. Soft voices, either shouting at each other or whispering softly, speak aloud. Sometimes they speak to her. She recognises them from somewhere, and it takes her hours to recall (Even though it is mere moments in the dream) that it is her parents and brother speaking._

_Several butterflies flutter past her and she watches them as oppose to the shadows, knowing the intimately designed blue wings far more than the blurred outlines and echoed voices. _

Eventually she wakes with a start when a score of screams pierce the air (She places them distantly in her past, along with gunshots and other faint sounds) and brushes off the noise. She doesn't think of them as nightmares. They don't scare her.

Her perception of fear has changed so much she can barely recognise it within herself, but only on the expressions of others. She is no empathetic creature. She does not feel as they do. She does not wish to.

She sits up slowly and hunts around the place for a hairbrush. Her hair, having been recently washed, is easier to cope with than she had imagined it to be, despite the tugging and pain flaring in her scalp.

When she finishes, she looks in the mirror, only to see her hair is still a tangled mess.

* * *

_I suppose it was just _supposed_ to be a tangled mess. . ._

* * *

She tries to smile but it does not fall on her lips. She cannot say she tried very hard. She wanders through the Riddler's quarters, avoiding the bedroom where he sleeps. She holds her teddy bear but can no longer seem to derive comfort from the matted fur and homely scent. She sniffles softly and puts it back on the chair, leaving it to stare at her forlornly.

When she returns to the table, cup of water in her hands, she cannot help but to return the stare, brown eyes soft and warm despite the clear tears that drip down her cheeks. She doesn't even know they are there until she feels one drip down her cheek and glances down to see it drop onto the table.

She frowns, wipes them away and returns to staring at her teddy bear, breathing shakily. She feels bad now for abandong the bear to sit here all day alone.

She takes him in her arms and hugs him hard, and is thankful, for perhaps there _is_ some comfort to be derived from it after all.

**So I hope you enjoyed that, and if anyone has a song to put up for me to put in the next chapter, let me know. **

**Please review. On that note, thanks for reading and goodnight.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Hye guys, since the last chapter was updated I've slid myself back into the driver seat of this story and decided to pound out another chapter. I hope you like it, and please review if you do! The song is,"Whisper" by Evanescence.**

**Catch me as I fall  
Say you're here and it's all over now  
Speaking to the atmosphere  
No one's here and I fall into myself  
This truth drives me into madness  
I know I can stop the pain  
If I will it all away  
If I will it all away  
Don't turn away  
(Don't give in to the pain)  
Don't try to hide  
(Though they're screaming your name)  
Don't close your eyes  
(God knows what lies behind them)  
Don't turn out the light  
(Never sleep, never die)  
I'm frightened by what I see  
But somehow I know that there's much more to come  
Immobilized by my fear  
And soon to be blinded by tears  
I can stop the pain  
If I will it all away  
If I will it all away  
Chorus  
Fallen angels at my feet  
Whispered voices at my ear  
Death before my eyes  
Lying next to me, I fear  
She beckons me, shall I give in?  
Upon my end shall it begin  
Forsaking all I've fallen for  
I rise to meet the end  
Chorus X5  
Servatis a periculum  
Servatis a maleficum  
Servatis a periculum  
Servatis a maleficum  
Servatis a periculum  
Servatis a maleficum  
Servatis a periculum  
Servatis a maleficum  
Servatis a periculum  
Servatis a maleficum  
Servatis a periculum  
Servatis a maleficum**

She doesn't want to go outside, but she has been ordered to. The Riddler's men and she are to go hunt down the rebels within the outer city, the Narrows.

Lyra swallows, running a hand back through her messy hair. For this, 'exercise' she has been given the gun that she spent so long training with, along with a knife.

She is expected to cause serious pain and the thought is somewhat unsettling despite

* * *

_The pain doesn't matter, he _said

* * *

herself. She runs a finger experimentally down the blade, unsurprised when accidentally slits through the pad of her finger. It is shallow, but starts weeping blood but a second later.

She sheaths it back into her belt, the weight of the gun holster on her skinny hips uneven and uncomfortable from where it has settle opposite the small sheath.

She has been told to dress in her old clothes instead of the new ones that the Riddler acquired. Of course, she complies. She wears her soft cream/ yellow coat (Worn with age, barely fitting and full of small patches she has sewn on with curtain material where holes have formed) along with old blue jeans (Which also have patches) and a knitted fluffy top that has always been too big on her.

"It will draw them out if they see you, a small lost child all alone in the streets," The Riddler tells her, smiling at her childish appearance. "Since you'll be going out in the Narrows, they'll think you to be in a lot of danger. After all, in the Narrows none of them will have seen you and those that have seen you won't remember you."

She nods uncertainly, knowing better than to question his judgement. Before she leaves with the group of men festering around the door, the Riddler calls her back. He holds out her teddy by the scruff of its neck, smirking, and says, clearly, "Take it with you."

She is reluctant. She knows that if she loses it, she may never find it again. He shakes it and she snatches it from his grasp. Better is safe than sorry, she knows, but she will just have to find a better way to keep it safe.

The next thing she knows, she is bundled up and shoved into the van.

Her nails dig into her bear's fur, feeling the grunge scrape off underneath them. She breathes softly, evenly, trying to maintain a careless expression. She looks at her colleagues with an uncertain expression.

"You know what's goin' on, kid?" One of them asks seriously, voice gruff.

She nods. The van will go up to the edges of the narrows and then she will enter. They will move around at a distance, dispersing enough to ambush.

Biting her lip, she feels it cut slightly but resolutely does not blink.

The men talk among themselves, the presence of a child not being enough to deter their bad language. Sometimes some of them, the better of them, glance at her after, ducking their heads. Sometimes they'll gruffly tell her not to repeat them.

They don't really say it anymore. No one does. She wonders if it is because she is growing up, or if they have simply managed overcome that she is a child and speak freely because of it. She doesn't know. Moreover, she doesn't particularly care anymore.

It's difficult, increasingly so, to find herself caring about much anymore.

The van trundles to a halt and she stands up, exiting the van. They follow like sheep, and one of them bends down, smearing ash on his fingertips before turning to her. She blinks but upraises her face obediently.

He smudges it under her eyes and over her cheeks. When he is finished, she looks like a zombie, shell shocked and nervous at the same time.

The nervous more than anything shows in her eyes, because her eyes are the one place where deceit is abruptly shown when not hidden well enough. The Riddler has told her as much.

She doesn't understand why, but that is just how it is. She will learn.

"Look afraid, kid," One of the men jeers, "Like a lost little lamb."

* * *

_I'm not a lamb anymore, don't you know that?_

* * *

Still she schools her expression to be afraid instead of nervous. Channelling her nerves into expression is easier and how most of her deceits' deliberately pass inspection. She bites her lips, tears welling in her eyes and trekking down her cheeks, clearing tracks through the ash.

She sniffs and rubs her knuckles at her eyes before beginning to walk into the narrows.

Eventually, she finds herself along walking into the grimmer parts of Gotham, the men gone from sight but near her somewhere.

It's unnerving because she knows that they will be watching her from afar, but also because she knows that the rebels will be around here somewhere, scouting her out as much as they are scouting them out.

She tastes soot on her tongue and shakes her head, brushing away her still forthcoming tears with her knuckles. Deeper and deeper she goes

* * *

_Into the belly of the beast, someone once told me_

* * *

Until she feels she has left civilisation completely and gone into some kind of horrifying ghost town.

She holds in her breath, feeling her hot tears run down her cheeks. A choked cry escapes from her throat, mournfully echoing through the air. It sounds like there are several Lyra's crying out, farther and farther away.

She sees something move in the window and has to fight not to jump. Dust motes drift across the air, the sun humid and the air tasting like ash. Its thick and hard to breathe down.

She cries out again mournfully, just like a lamb to slaughter, and this time more movement is seen, from the window.

"Mummy?" She calls out, hoping to invoke some kind of sympathy. Her voice is sharp as a crows violently sharp cry, "Mummy, where are you?"

She grabs her teddy tighter to her chest.

One of the doors suddenly bangs open and she startles, whimpering and clasping at her teddy. A woman, thirty at the least, approaches, skin smeared with ash and hair hanging in lank strings over her shoulders. There's a pale yellow bandage stretching across them with dried blood on them.

"Child, child get inside," She hisses, grabbing Lyra's hand and trying to drag her into one of the houses. Lyra resists, crying out.

She pulls her hand away from the woman, surprising the woman with her surprising strength.

"Are you mummy?" Lyra cries, tears now coursing down her cheeks. The woman nods firmly.

* * *

_Liar!_

* * *

"Are _you_ mummy?" She repeats softly, whimpering and falling down to her knees, curling up.

"Dahlia get back inside!" A strong male voice hisses from behind the window. Several people join in from several buildings near them, hissing at them to get inside and quickly.

Eventual a few of them run out, grabbing Dahlia and trying to drag her inside.

"No! Get the girl, get her inside! I won't lose another child to them!" Dahlia cries hysterically. Its then that the Riddler's men take action. They've found themselves windows and nifty hiding places and now they move from them.

A rain of gunfire sounds out and Lyra cries out, clasping her hands over her ears to try and protect them from the loud rasping bang of the bullets and the odd liquidated _shhhlllrk!_ As they tear through flesh. Screams punctuate the air, puncturing her ears.

She cringes, curling herself up into the dust as the rebels run in frenzy from the men. It reminds Lyra eerily of wolf hunting down dumb, blundering wildebeest. She scuttles backwards when one shot too many nearly hit her, scurrying to her feet.

She looks around sharply, her eyes catching sight of one of the empty houses.

* * *

_Grant me shelter from the hail of bullets_

* * *

She runs for it, kicking up clouds of ash and dust. She stumbles over several lying people, unthinking of their pain as her feet kick at them as she jumps over them. She gets into the house and watches from inside. It's like watching a war and now the rebels have brought out their own big guns to remedy their enemies horrendous fire.

Neither shoots for her, and Lyra wonders if the rebels even know which team she is playing for. She does not allocate herself to a team or position, however, merely staying inside to watch the carnage. At this rate if she went out the door, some sharp eyes instinct ridden shooter would gun her down in seconds.

Instincts are all the range for survival here. Blood rains down in explosions from the sky in a thick mist, mingling with the dust motes.

She hears the hollers and cries echo out, punctuating the other sides despairing of pain and terror.

Lyra spread her fingers, pressing her hand against the grimy glass. When she takes it away, she has smudged the grime that coats it, making her hand print clear over the glass. She looks at it for a moment, looking at the delicate swirls of her fingerprints and contemplating them.

She moves again, this time swiping her fingers through the muck to swirl out patterns.

She uses the distraction to keep herself from focusing on the loud shots

* * *

_Because the more I focus, the more I hear, the more I hear, the more it hurts_

* * *

And screams.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Her heart thunders in her chest despite not listening and her breathing quickens. Her nails scratch against the glass, creating a nauseating sound. She hears a silent scream building up in her chest and she tries to push it down.

Eventually, the screams drift away to nothing and nothing is left but the tension of war, which hums in the air like a tangible thing. She pushes out a hand, wondering if she could somehow cut through it; break through the bubble of the tension. She cannot.

She knocks on the glass softly, watching the dust settle. The Riddler's men are the apparent winners, for they are the only ones left standing in the end. She waves at them and then her heart freezes in her chest.

* * *

_Where is my bear!_

* * *

Her eyes scan across the ground, face pressing close to the glass. She spies him eventually and the erratic pounding of her heart is eventually smoothed over to something that could actually resemble normality.

She runs out the door, snatching her bear off the ground and dusting him off. The taste is stronger than ever, and there is a strong putrid odour that almost colours the air.

Disgusted, she turns to the Riddler's men, and asks softly, "Can we go home now?"

There are nods and a few well-worn smirks of triumph.

"We've just gotta go inside the houses, check for any that might have hidden themselves away," One says, cocking his gun.

Lyra inhales and nods slightly.

"You can check out that house, Lyra," He says, nodding towards the one she was in a few moments ago. She knows why; it is a ploy, because they already know that there is likely nobody in there. If there were, they would have likely come out to get her, so to speak, or Lyra herself would have heard them hiding.

Still, she shrugs. She does not want to bloody her sheathed knife or have to shoot somebody yet. Not if she can avoid it. The screams are tenuous, she knows, and they seem to last far longer than they actually do.

She goes back into the house and begins to stalk about the first floor, checking inside cupboards and closets. She finds it empty.

Eventually, she makes her way upstairs. A sudden scuffling sound comes from a bedroom and she freezes. She takes her gun from the holster, her fingers curling around the handle and trigger. She opens it quickly, slinging up the gun and checking out all angles of the room. She moves to the closet and opens it.

She freezes. The gun wavers in her hand and she shivers softly. Her bear drops from her spare hand, landing with a soft whump onto the wooden ground.

Two small children look up at her, shaking and whimpering softly. They are identical twins, each with a head of sandy blonde hair and soft blue eyes.

Ash is smeared across their faces and they have bloodied limbs. Blood pumps lazily from the left hand side girl's arm, and Lyra can see a bullet embedded in her thin flesh.

She kneels slowly, hesitant.

"Hi," She whispers.

The twins press closer together, eyes wider.

"I can help you," She says softly, "Do you want me to?"

The girl on the left conceals her bullet wound with her hand, looking almost guilty.

"No," She whispers.

Lyra licks her lips slowly and then picks up her teddy bear, offering it to the girl. The girl watches it for a few minutes and then slowly reaches out, stroking a grimy paw. She doesn't, like Lyra, seem to mind that it is so dirty.

"If you let me take care of that arm, then I'll let you hold him," Lyra promises softly. The girl swallows, face pale and sweating.

"Please," She whispers.

Lyra nods, "We have to be quick, alright?"

Both girls nod. "Girl on the right, can you please collect a needle, some thread and a pair of tweezers and scissors?"

The girl nods, looking at the other as though for confirmation.

The other whispers, "In the first aid kit downstairs."

The other scampers out.

"Try to be quiet and stay out of sight," Lyra tells her quietly. The girl nods.

Lyra, as promised, hands over the bear, and the girl takes it happily, cringing in pain from her arm, her face crumpling.

"It's going to be alright," Lyra whispers. The other reappears with the first aid pack in hand and gives it to Lyra.

She flicks open the catches and searches through, finding out her chosen objects.

"I need a jug of water, a sponge and a tea towel," She says.

Once again the girl disappears and reappears.

Lyra took up the tweezers, carefully looking over the wound.

"This will hurt. A lot."

She dug the tweezers in and girl gasps. Lyra uses her over hand to grab the sponge and shove it into the girl's mouths, swallowing the belatedly loud cry. She moans softly, biting down on it. She grasps the bullet with the tweezers and pulls it out quickly, letting it drop onto the ground.

She winces at the amount of blood to flow out the girls arm, quickly taking the sponge from the girl's mouth and daubing it in water before beginning to wash up the blood.

She dropped it, threading the needle and piercing the girl's shredded skin. She pulled away and then caught the others side, pulling the wound together. The wound was small and easily stitched, even if it was bloody.

Lyra wiped over her arm again when it was stitched, spraying on anaesthetic.

"Lyra?" A heavy voice shouts, startling the three of them. Taking her bear back, Lyra gives the other the wipe and tea towel.

"Finish up," She whispers.

Footsteps, hard and heavy, thud as the man starts ascending the stairs. Lyra walks out the room quickly, not noticing that she is covered in blood. The man stops, staring at her.

"Did you get someone?" He asks. Lyra shakes her head.

"_Really_? Then why are you covered in blood?"

Lyra glances down and swallows. She is covered with blood. Her coat sleeves look as though she has _dipped_ them in blood. She wasn't bloodied earlier, but instead covered in a thick coat of dust. Now she has both.

The man shoves her into the wall and crashes through the door into the room. Twin screams ring out and then twin bullet shots. Then there is nothing save for a thick humming silence which devoutly scours throughout the house and the sound of her own heartbeat thundering loudly in her chest.

* * *

_Too quiet. It's too quiet. Please, please. . . forgive me_

* * *

_tha-thump. tha-thump, tha-thump._

**And that was that. I hope you enjoyed it. I actually wrote it quite quickly, considering. Anyways, please review- if you do I will love you forever.**

**~BlueHeartedQueen**


	14. Chapter 14

**Hey guys! It's been a while! I've been meaning to get around to it for some time with no avail- you know how life is; I'll be off to college soon and I doubt that it's gonna get any easier than. Sigh. Anyways, eventually, this thing will get to the dang point. Anyways, sorry these chapters are so short. I only have bursts of Lyra's life in me at a time, if you actually know what I mean. **

**The song is, "The Day You Died" by Arch Enemy. Enjoy. **

**A precious child with an innocent mind**

**Born to suffer in this life or for another**

**So hopeless and relentless falls this remorseless day**

**The dark remains of a violent world**

**The day you died my tears ran dry**

**I feel you, I hear you echo in my soul**

**I failed you, I miss you so**

**The day you died echoes in my soul  
This world's on fire, turned its back on us**

**A lost horizon left behind**

**So hopeless and relentless falls this remorseless day**

**The dark reality of a hostile world  
The day you died my tears ran dry**

**I feel you, ****I hear you, echo in my sou****l**

**I failed you, I miss you so**

**The day you died echoes in my soul  
The day you died my tears ran dry**

**I feel you,**

** I hear you echo in my soul**

**I failed you, ****I miss you so**

**The day you died echoes in my soul**

**Lyra**

She waits, perfectly still and perfectly patient. She does not allow herself to think of the punishment which will come; she knows that building up an irrational fear will do herself no good, as well as lead her to either underestimate or overestimate the punishment she will be given.

She has been told to sit still, wait for the Riddler's return. She does as commanded. She is beginning to realise what thin ice she is skating on, and it makes her uncomfortable.

She trembles, very finely, her heart trembling and scrunching up in her chest. It isn't pleasant.

Her teddy bear, held up via the ribbon she has looped around her fingers and around his throat, dangles in the air, tattered and filthy. She loves it, but at the same time, she is beginning to tire. She does not want to let it hold her back by protecting it, and she theorises that is why the persons mum and dad left her behind.

They wanted to move on with their lives.

She hears footsteps approaching her from around the corridor and dutifully stands, turning towards the noise and putting her hands behind her back and clasping them together. It is a militarily stance, though she does not recognise it. Absently, a wild brown curl has strayed from where she had tucked it behind her ear, but she does not move to brush it back.

She just remains still. It is the Best Thing to Do.

He appears before her, wearing that vividly green costume of his. He doffs his hat, and she gets the feeling she has hope yet of avoiding an extreme punishment. She wonders, idly, if he understands why she did what she did. She decides he doesn't.

She can taste bitter blood in the back of her throat, building up slightly, and knows there is likely something wrong with her.

"Lyyyy-ra," He says, a maniacal smile stretching across his lips as he stretched out her names and lilts the sound it makes in the back of his throat.

She dips her head, murmuring acknowledgement in a simple return of, "Riddler."

"You did a bad thing, Lyra. You helped the people that are against us, that want to kill us."

* * *

_They wanted to save me._

* * *

"You did not hand in the two of the young you discovered. Perhaps you would like to explain yourself? Perhaps then I can think of a punishment worthy to accommodate them."

She cups her hands and spits up the blood into them, choking slightly on it, before she raises her head, a sticky tendril of blood running down her chin.

"I'm sorry," She says softly, voice made weaker still by the blood gargling in the back of it. She realises dimly that the Riddler's henchman must have hit her to hard, caused some kind of damage to her stomach, or her throat. She was willing to bet on the throat.

"That isn't what I want to hear Lyra. I want to know _why_ you did it."

She struggles to find the words, find the reason she knows she must have somewhere in her subconscious.

"I don't really know why," She says slowly, her expression falling thoughtful. "I saw them, and they were tucked away, huddled together and covered in blood. . ."

"Did it remind you of you?" The Riddler asks, stooping over and meeting her eyes with his.

She pauses, cocking her head slightly. "A little," She affirmed, "They were bloodied and injured, and I knew how to help."

The Riddler uncurled himself from his stooped position, standing tall above her.

"Well, you should have done the opposite. If you had, they would have died a less painful death. You had a weapon. You knew how to use it. It would have been quick, painless. People suffer more than life than death."

Of course, Lyra does not understand this. She does not understand dead means gone, by any respect. She knows only it equates to a higher, the highest, state of pain possible. She can see it in their eyes; the lights fade because there is nothing good and pure left anymore and all that's left is pain so intense, they cannot move, can no longer breathe. She knows it means the organs destruct and dissolve.

She only understands he likes the sound of his own talking and that he's trying to get under her skin.

* * *

_I don't want him under my skin._

* * *

"What is death?" She asks softly, her tone sweet and innocent. "When you sleep and don't awake? When the pain is too intense to do anything more? I've seen death many times. They fall asleep with their eyes open and they don't move again." She pauses, her eyes tentative. "Do you think they dream?"

He pauses, confused. "You don't . . . understand yet, do you?"

She tilts her head. "Understand," She repeats. No. She does not understand.

The Riddler mulls over his thoughts.

"So, think of this way. You have a body, and you have a spirit, which is basically all your characteristics, what you like and don't like. Your brain is commanded by the spirit. When you die, your spirit is . . . torn away from the body. It goes out and then it fades to nothing. Then your body shuts down. There's nothing left in the body anymore to make the body feel pain, or anything. Nothing to wake it up."

"So there is no dream. There is no soul left in that person."

Lyra knew what a soul was; it was, supposedly, the essence of a person. If it had gone elsewhere, broken down like a chemical composition, then there was nothing left. To be dead was to be . . . empty.

She takes in a sharp breath. Her parents were dead. Her parents were empty. That was why they had not come back for her; they no longer existed. The people she had drawn out had been emptied because of her. People that were threats were made immobile.

But those two girls? She'd saved them, hadn't she? She'd bandaged up the wounds, she'd sorted it out. They were no threat. They did not need to be emptied.

"They weren't a threat," Lyra says softly. "They could have been saved as I, taught to think of them as the threat."

"Where is one threat to one side, there must be another on the other side," was his smooth reply, "They could not understand this as you have learnt to Lyra. They were under enemy lines for too long."

Lyra pauses. "They were brainwashed?"

"In a sense, yes. Society brainwashes."

Lyra tilts her head. "So, I could have saved them by killing them?"

The Riddler takes in a breath, seeming excited. "Yes."

Lyra bites her lip anxiously and bows down her head. "What is to be my punishment?"

The Riddler smiles slowly, looking almost pleased. "Well, you've seen the error of your ways. I suppose something light will suffice. I think . . . it's time you saw some real horrors."

"Real horrors?" She repeats. It sounds surreal, even to her.

"Yes. I'm going to have a word with Dr Crane, and later I'll come back for you." He pauses, ruffling her hair fondly. "I wonder what scares you."

Lyra raises her head, her eyes looking up through her lashes. "What scares you?"

The Riddler does not merit her with reply, merely beginning to walk away from her. Lyra sighs softly, not bothering to give chase.

"Shall I simply wait here?" She calls after him.

He stops, stalling for a moment. "Go to then gym."

She sighs softly and talks to herself as she goes on her way, puzzling over the ways of life. Life; when the soul is in the body. Death; when the soul is not.

"He means the Scarecrow," She mumbles, "I know he does. But why? I understand it now. My mistake. So why does he still wish to punish me? Is it merely to ensure that I keep to right path he wants me on? And what is the right path?"

Confusion boils in her mind, and she wonders at it. Eventually, she finds herself in the gym, lifting up weights in her hand. The weight burns a lot less than it used to, and she can feel tightly coiled muscles springing and snapping at the movement. Still, with her mind on the subject at hand, she finds it easier to forget about the burn of exercise than she once did.

* * *

_It wasn't their fault. They weren't brainwashed. So why did they have to die?_

* * *

Her thoughts circulate over her parents, dimly trying to recall their image. She gets a blurred outline, but nothing more. Just words. Little, useless words.

"Lyra, love, I have something for you!" She remembers a faint nondescript man, with blurred features that look like a camera has taken them while in movement. She can't tell apart his features; she can, however, accept the beat he holds out to her.

She knows the bear. She loves the bear. The bear is becoming difficult to think about.

She shakes her head, setting the weights down in their place and going over to a punching bag. She slips on hot, sweaty textured boxing gloves, shuddering at the feel. They have near enough deteriorated. She controls her breathing. She swings a fast succession of punches at the bag.

She works up a sweat, her brown eyes hardening as the breath whooshes out of her and she recalls what happened earlier, with the rebels. Those people were pitiful, weak. They were easily dealt with. They weren't doing any harm that Lyra could see.

Why was the Riddler so intent to wipe them out? She stops slowly, sliding her hands from the gloves. The stench of sweat wafts around her, coming from several sources. These people killed without feeling. They ripped souls from hearts. Bad souls. Bad hearts. She couldn't stand to listen to it any other way.

She listens to the rasping of her breath for a second and flexes her arms. Jenny should be around here somewhere, but Lyra doesn't want to see her.

* * *

_I don't know what is truth and what is lies anymore. I don't want to know. I don't want to be wrong._

* * *

She doesn't want to talk. She just wants to feel her muscles burn, just wants the distraction. Later tonight, she'll be fighting; if she can withstand the Scarecrow's toxin.

**So, yeah, short. I wanted to end the chapter here so I'd have something to go on about and start of with on the next chapter. For now, I hope you enjoyed, hope you review, and I hope you understand that Lyra is a very confused girl, and her morals are melting away. I don't know if she can be salvaged after this whole deal is over, so give me your views on that. *le gasp* It's nearly time to switch Lyra's mentor. **


	15. Chapter 15

**It's been too long, and for that reason, I've decided to instigate two chapters on short release, one of which was already published on. . .Friday, was it? Anyway, since I have a relatively good starting point, it should be relatively easy, Please, if you read this, review. It would mean a lot to me**.

**The song is, "Fear" by Disturbed.**

**Fear something again**  
** Huh, huh, huh, huh huh, huh**  
** Fear something again**  
** Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh**  
** Fear something again**  
** Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh**  
** Fear something again**  
** Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh**

** Reject**  
** Are you no one**  
** Feel you nothing**  
** You know I'll bet you think**  
** You have a good reason to be living**  
** In the limelight of the fortunate ones**  
** you're too weakened by the poison**  
** That they feed you in the living lie**  
** They don't believe you**  
** Call to no one**  
** Trust in nothing**  
** Little impotent one**

** I don't want to be innocent, you know**  
** I don't want to let them hypnotize me**

** Punk ass, are you listening?**  
** Can you hear me or are you deaf and dumb to my language?**  
** Do the real words seem to hurt you**  
** Well put em' up motherfucker**  
** You'll feel it**  
** When I stamp it on your forehead**  
** So you will never forget**  
** That you're a reject**  
** And you're no one**  
** And you're nothing**  
** Little impotent one**

** Fear awaken**  
** Go with it now**  
** And let it overcome you**  
** Fear awaken**  
** Your mind is racing**

** I don't understand why you don't like me**  
** Why don't you like me?**  
** Am I so different from you**  
** Now does it scare you that I'm able to discern**  
** What to love and what to burn**  
** I'll add your fuel to the fire now**  
** Stand back, brother take your hand back**  
** Leave it and I might crack**  
** More than a smile or two you see**  
** Don't judge what you don't understand**  
** You can't deny what has been given to me**

** I don't want to be _[x4]_**  
** Innocent, you know**  
** I don't want to be _[x3]_**  
** I don't want to let them hypnotize me _[Stanza x2]_**

** Fear awaken**  
** Go with it now**  
** And let it overcome you**  
** Fear awaken**  
** Go with it now _[Line x2]_**  
** Your fear awaken**  
** Go with it now**  
** And let it overcome you**  
** Fear awaken**  
** Your mind is racing**

** Erasing now**

** Hey reject**  
** Are you no one**  
** Feel you nothing**  
** You know I'll bet you think**  
** You have a good reason to be living**  
** In the limelight of the fortunate ones you know**

The first thing she was told to do was to lie back on the metal gurney. She did so uneasily, fear prickling over her skin. She stank of sweat from her work at the gym, and the contrast between the heat of her body and ice-cold of the gurney was somewhat startling.

She shivers slightly, Goosebumps crawling over her skin.

The second thing that occurs is that the good Doctor, whom she hasn't seen for quite some time now, steps forward and begins to strap her body down. Her ankles, wrists and stomach all had a tight stretchy material buckled over her skin tightly.

It was uncomfortable to say at the least and whenever she moved, any uncovered skin brushed against the metal and she was forced to hold back a cringe.

She blinks somewhat owlishly as a lamp like light is switched on, momentarily blinding her. Her pupils dilate into small black holes before they retract back to their usual size.

"What's the light for?" She asks softly, somewhat dazed. She turns her head away from it, blinking slowly.

The good Doctor merely smiled slightly, "It's adjusting the environment slightly in your mind. Disorienting you."

He leans into her, one hand gracing the skin on her arm before he moves back, squirting a syringe and flicking away the excess. Mindlessly, Lyra's memory drones; squirting the syringe enables any bubbles of air to be pushed out. She attempts to hush it while he leans back in.

Her breathing picks up, and she suddenly feels vulnerable. He holds her arm again, fingers tightening.

She can see her vein through her thin arm and she swallows as the needle slides in. She wasn't afraid of needles when she was a child; most young children aren't. But she's grown, and now she knows pain on intimate terms. She squeezes her eyes shut, her lips parting to gasp in air.

The air, even before he presses the plunger, tasted stale and bitter. But when he does, it quickly becomes so thick she can barely take in a single breath.

Her heart flutters quickly inside her chest and she can't even count the beats they're so fast. She feels a sob choking her throat, trapping air inside her. Above her, a hand reaches out, a suit sleeve following. It's rotted, writhing and practically moving all on its own with maggots and flies.

The light turns out, and immediately her fear accelerates.

She had thought that she would find this experience weak at the best. How wrong little Lyra was.

The shadows take shapes and she swears there is something moving inside the shadows, as though the shadow has become tangible. She hears soft cries and weeping and from the darkness figures shift and wail.

Why has it become so dark? There is nothing but darkness now, and the creatures writhing within it. Occasionally, amber light flicks through from somewhere, like cracks in a floorboard, and she sees glimpses of pure terror.

The creatures are toddler sized, small with heads that seem bigger than average. Their skins are cracked open and blackened, as though they have been burnt badly by a searing fire.

They get closer and Lyra thrashes. It's then she realises, terrified, that she cannot move, that she's strapped down and _oh god, oh god_, they're getting _closer_, the smell of charred flesh _burning_ thick in the air. Amongst them she sees the twins, reanimated corpses with gunshots through their heads and chunks of brain falling down.

A terrified screaming wails through her and she hears it echo in the air around her. She thrashes, her wails growing louder as they brush against her, nails scratching at her tender belly, moans and whimpers echoing in the air from both her and them.

She tries to relocate herself, tries to remember where she is. She recalls the room, the spare room, where the windows are boarded up and the gurney she lays on rests. She recalls the Master of Fear and the Riddler, and cries out their names, pleading for help.

Nothing happens and the noise of the damned children and people raises louder and louder, hands so close she can see their fingertips and fingerprints, and how can it not be real, but how can it _be _real? Hallucinations, she thinks, through her fear fogged mind.

Her eyes roll back into her head as a fit shakes her and lack of oxygen chokes her. She feels blood coming from her mouth and knows she has bitten her tongue deeply.

She chokes as a hand forcibly shoves against her mouth, fingers forcing their way into her mouth and a block of something is pressed onto her tongue. She gags, and, exhausted, her eyes roll back into the back of her head and she falls into a faint.

Lyra opens her eyes slowly, blinking. The room snaps into sharp focus and she sits up abruptly. She looks around; _no reanimated corpses, no burnt children, no maggot infested monsters . . . _the air whooshes out of her in a relieved noise and she brushed a hand across her forehead, feeling the damp sweat humidity of her skin.

Her hand shot out in surprise while she observed it. She wasn't tied down anymore. The light was back on, filling the room with a more gentle light. It appeared to be on a softer setting. Lyra was glad for it. Shaking, she turned herself around and slid off the gurney.

Her legs felt like jelly, unstable and shaky. The door opens and the good doctor enters, clipboard in hands. Numerous notes, that look more like Chicken scratch than anything else to Lyra, fill the page.

He looks at her and gives her a cool smile.

"Lyra," He greets.

"Doctor," She replies, her eyes settling on the notes. "What did you do to me?"

"Creed taught you some bits about the body didn't he? And how some drugs affect them?"

"Yes."

"Well, that was my own drug, designed to make a person see whatever it is they fear."

Lyra nods slowly. "So it was only a hallucination. I thought so, but . . . it was highly realistic."

At this, the good doctor smirks. "I pride myself on it."

She blinks, uncertain of how to feel about such a thing. As though he senses her hesitancy, his smile widens.

"Don't worry," he says, smirking, "You'll learn all about this kind of thing when you're underneath my mentoring. And perhaps more."

She smiles uncertainty, not entirely sure she wants the knowledge she knows he wants to pump into her. She feels like she's been placed into chemical vial herself, and like everything they do to her will cause some kind of chemical reaction with her, until she ends up as they want her to end up.

He leans towards her suddenly and she moves back before she even has a chance to think about it.

"Stick out your tongue," He commands, "You were biting it pretty hard."

Now that he says it, it's like suddenly her tongue flares up in pain, throbbing bitterly. She sticks it out and he looks at it.

"No," he says finally, "You shouldn't need stitches."

She nods slightly, fighting the urge to cringe back as the image of his leaning over her appears in her mind, syringe held at the ready.

* * *

_It was the Riddler's idea._

* * *

She blinks. Yes It was the Riddler's fault. But she had to endure this, didn't she? It was the only way she could be stronger. She looks down at her body. Here, she is fed. She is longer starving as badly as she was, and is no longer on the verge of total collapse. Her own soul could have been up for grabs, and she had been saved, in a manner of speaking.

Here, she is stronger than she had ever thought she would be. She has muscles, she has a growing intelligence. She has friends here, even if she has also found others who would prefer to gut her than to grow to like her. The feeling with those, however, is becoming eerily mutual.

These days, she is empathetical to those around her; if she senses somebody poses to threat insult or hurt, she avoids them. If they attempt to lash tongue at her, she is already ready to lash tongue right back or cause a small physical deterrent, unless, of course, she knows them to be her betters.

She is more than she wanted to be, and she is not certain if it is a good thing. She worries that she is becoming something which she does not want to be. She fears this. But surely, if they are bad, they deserve this endless agony? This threat of death and pain?

She doesn't know. She pities them too much and it stalls her from objective. Creed, the Riddler, her mentors all want her to be strong. To be merciless in her endeavours. Is this what her truest mentor, her final master, Bane, wishes of her? Is this what she is supposed to be? She doesn't know.

She blinks sleep from her eyes and returns to the present, where Jonathon is standing patiently, idly scrawling things down onto the paper.

"What are you doing?" She asks uncertainly. She can feel a slight tremble of exhaustion starting up through her body.

"Just note taking." He murmurs, turning away from her. "And you can go now. The Riddler was quite satisfied with the results, as am I."

"So, if I ever displeased him again . . ."

"You'd be strapped back down again. Who knows? After time, you may even develop immunity."

Lyra nods slightly. "Well, goodbye, I guess. I think I'm going to go wash myself up before I sleep."

Jonathon nods back in response, returning to his notes.


End file.
